


the right kind (of bad love)

by JunkerJackrabbit



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Bad Flirting, Consensual Kink, Disaster Lesbians, F/F, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Torture, Impromptu Fight Club, Smut, Swearing, Terrible People, Wild theories about Junkertown
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-17
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2019-07-13 16:37:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 36
Words: 214,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16021811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JunkerJackrabbit/pseuds/JunkerJackrabbit
Summary: Oasis has hired on a contingent of Junkers to work in the Ministry of Mechanics. Of the seventeen that started, only seven are left at the end of two months One of those is Jacqueline "Jackrabbit" Vargas, a mecha mechanic out of Junkertown. Former scrapper, professional disaster. She has a type. Previous history says that type isterrifying.Junkertown OC w/previous relationship with the Junker Queen falls hard for Oasis geneticist.When your relationship is an actual trashfire.





	1. you're like a cigarette, i just need to take a hit

It hadn't been an easy transition, moving from Junkertown to Oasis. Everything here was too polished, too neat and clean and hidden behind eleven different ways to make it more palatable and elegant. There are days that Jacqueline misses the dust and the grit, the faint acrid taste of desert air in the back of her throat as she watched dust storms from the window of her apartment, watching the lightning and knowing that it was turning some portion of the sandstorm into nebulous shards of glass. 

There had been seventeen of them recruited out of Junkertown, hired on to assist with mechs in the R&D facility after their particularly ingenius modifications on battle mecha were uncovered. Two months in, and there were only seven of them left, the others having called it quits over the long hours or extensive safety regulations or both. One had to be escorted from the premises after an altercation with an omnic co-worker led to blows. 

While she doesn't have anything in particular against omnics, she knows that many of the others do. Part of that, she knows, is Weetabix - the omnic currently perched on the end of her workstation as she repairs a vent in his chassis from an 'accident' with one of the other Junkers and their mech. Bix had ironically been one of the first friends she made in Oasis, a chipper droid with an unquestioningly British accent, who took mercy on her out of training and showed her around the facility.

"It missed most of the circuitry," she confides to him as the nearby datapad chirps, glancing down on it as the scan pops up. "This should be an easy patch. You should report Marks. Even if this was an accident, which I doubt, that tosser should know how a safety works."

A chirruping sound escapes the omnic, and he confides, "I'll consider it. I don't want to make things worse around here. Your ah...fellows are still riled up about the Keller being fired last week."

"Fuck that," Jacqueline answers, her touch light despite the part of her brain telling her that the omnic can't feel it as she smooths a heating patch onto the metal to warm it up enough to mold. "He steps _one toe_ out of line, Bix, and I will wholesale take it out of his ass on our first leave back to 'town."

While the metal is warming, she takes the opportunity to check the remainder of his joints and chassis for additional damage, finding little but a few scrapes and scuffs that should be easy to buff out. Weetabix gives her a look, but says nothing, instead opting to turn on the music in the comm channel they share in the background. The sound of the grinder is low against the melody as she works out a place near his shoulder where the metal is abraded and patches it. Once it shines and gleams once more, she takes the opportunity to check her makeup in it, and he laughs. 

"Really, Jack?" his voice echoes with mirth.

Lean and slender, her coppery-bronze skin smudged with machine oil and flecks of metal from working a long day in the mecha sub-basement already, Jacqueline Vargas looks like she would blend seamlessly into Junkertown, even in the Oasis-branded jumpsuit she's required to wear for work. She's made it work for her, the arms tied around her waist to leave a black t-shirt visible beneath, the sleeves rolled up to her bronze shoulders. Galveston hates it because it leaves her tattoos visible and the Oasis supervisors call it a 'uniform violation'. She could give a shit. They work in a basement garage. It's just an excessively fancy basement garage.

Her dark eyes, lingering somewhere between chocolate and charcoal, are limned in smoky liner and a hint of gold, and when they sweep over her reflection, she makes a 'tch' sound, unrolling her sleeve to retrieve the tube of lipstick in it and apply a coat of dark cherry red. Glancing up at the omnic looking down at her, Jacqueline winks cheekily at him, using her best bedroom voice to tease, "Gotta look good for my best guy, right?"

She leans up to place a kiss to his cheek, eliciting another chirruping laugh from the mech, and he winces slightly as he presses a hand to his side. With a low, amused hum, Bix retorts, "What did you tell me last week? 'I'm not for male consumption'?"

Jacqueline laughs, a pleasant sound, and rakes a hand through her dark hair to reply, "Yeah, but I'm not for female consumption lately either, apparently."

"You're going to burn your hair. Turn around," Bix announces in a tinny voice, sounding mirthful. When she complies, he combs it back with his metal fingertips, arranging it in a loose, if somewhat messy knot at the base of her kneck and wrapping a spare elastic from the table around it. 

Then, the cold tip of a metal finger touches her the back of her shoulder, ever-so-lightly tracing the lines of black there, and he asks, "New ink?"

"Oh. Yeah, mate," Jacqueline shifts a bit, turning around and gesturing toward her collarbones - under which two leaping black rabbits flank a stylized combination of sun rays and crescent moon on her sternum. "I wanted something to offset my rabbits. It turned out well, I think. I can show you the rest later if you want."

One copper-skinned knuckle raps his chassis just above the heat patch, and she intones amusedly, "I could etch you something here if you want, while the metal's soft. We could match."

"I'll pass, I think bunnies are more your look," the omnic retorts with a snort, leaning back on his palms as his side warms.

"Bunnies," she snorts in response, amusement glittering in her dark eyes. "They're jackrabbits, jackass."

"Yes, but are they _Junkertown_ jackrabbits?" he quips back, and she laughs. 

Her unit leader, Galveston's voice crackles over the music on the comm, "Change of plans, folks. We have some upstairs folk coming down for show and tell. Prepare to play nice and answer a couple questions if you're asked. Roll out that famous Junkertown hospitality, but without the hello punches. Best behavior. You got any questions, ask?"

She can't help but chuckle at the sound of his voice, chipper and cheeky all the while. Galveston is one of the good ones, and he stands out like a sore thumb amongst the cold, clinical thrum of conversation that is more and more common in their superiors. He makes it work for him. One of the most liked of the Junkertown recruits.

Jacqueline is working on the heat patch when the lift arrives with the observation team, the banter between her and the omnic a pleasant back and forth as she molds the edges of the metal back into place. When she looks up for a moment at the group of ministers and investors, she feels her mouth go a little dry, fumbles as she burns her fingertips. _Wrap me in flannel and give me a Viking funeral on a ship full of cats._

"Sorry about that, Bix," she hisses, shaking her hand as if that will dim the sharp sting, and using the other to pat the omnic on the torso as if he could feel the reassuring gesture. She can't help it, as her dark eyes drift back up toward the group near the lift. That woman is so fucking tall. At least six-five, and all sharp angles and dark, neatly-pressed suit in the very best possible way. The ends of their fiery hair look almost gold in the light, and the sense of poised control in the lines of her body are.... well damn.

God, did she have a type. According to Galveston, that type was _terrifying_. Time to try not to think about what her lipstick would look like on that neck for the next thirty minutes. It was going _really_ well so far.

Bix follows her gaze over toward the group, a chirruping laugh humming in his voicebox as he notices the tips of her ears turn red. Grasping her gently by the wrist, he seeks out a small tube of biogel in her toolbox and smears it on the ends of her scorched fingers.

"Disaster lesbian," he teases with a little chuckle. She grins in spite of herself.

"I'll take the Vishkar rep," Chance remarks into the comm from across the room. "I was showing him schematics for the R-18 last week, and he had some suggestions about how to optimize the enhancements."

Jacqueline looks up at Bix and winks, tapping her communicator to remark cheekily, "Dibs on the redhead."

There's a long moment of silence, followed by an exasperated sigh on the other end of the line, and then Galveston's voice stammers, "Uh...Jack."

She can tell that he's trying to put on his widest and most charming smile, and laughs a little at throwing him off his game. Doubles down with a teasing, "She's too tall for you, Gal. And criminally gorgeous. You don't deserve her."

As she looks across the garage at them, she can see Galveston staring at her wide-eyed, attempting his best to keep that smile on. He isn't the only one, she notices as the tall woman and not a few of the others scan the workstations. _Shit_.

"Yeah, I included them on the comm channel when they hit the bridge. _Everyone_ heard you."

Oh.  
Well.  
_Fuck_.

Bix can't stop laughing, the chirruping sound ringing softly off the metal workstation as she turns back to look at him with a dim sort of horror. 

"You're so bad at this," he teases laughingly. "How do you even talk to women?"

"Shut up," Jacqueline answers, wholly aware of how hot her face feels. His laugh is infectious. She turns back to work on the omnic then, requesting that he lift an arm to allow her a better angle on the heatpatched metal as she smooths down the sides with a grinder. She almost drops it at the sound of a soft, thoughtful sound just behind her. 

"Shit," Jacqueline murmurs, quickly catching the tool before it drops to the ground and then looking apologetically at Bix once again. "Sorry, Bix. Sorry."

When she turns, she feels a renewed rush of heat to her cheekbones, her coppery skin dusted with rose over them and at the neck. Galveston. Galveston, you cheeky son of a bitch. He really sent her over here. Great. What could possibly go wrong at this point?

"Dibs on the redhead?" the taller, paler woman remarks with what she hopes is dry humor and not the start of another 'professionalism in the workplace' speech. Her voice sounds better than Jack could have imagined. It's low and a little husky, like whiskey and smoke, rolling with an accent that she places after a minute as Irish.

Here goes nothing. 

_God, how is she so fucking tall._ From this close, she can see that the taller woman has mismatched eyes behind fiery copper lashes, one a dark blue that reminds her of the ocean at night, while the other gleams a rich scarlet, like wine or maybe blood. There are freckles dusting over the bridge of her nose, and Jacqueline feels her mouth go dry again as she wonders where else they might be. _Fuck._

She doesn't know how long passes before a cold metal hand comes to rest on her shoulder and she jumps. Bix applies a faint pressure, his voice tinny as he whispers in a voice she _knows_ the other can hear, "Jack, you're staring."

Clearing her throat softly, she tries to recover by adopting a charming, if somewhat embarassed smile, and offers her hand as she says, "Sorry. God. I'm sorry. I didn't expect..." 

You to be so tall. Beautiful. Fucking perfect. _Get a fucking grip, Vargas_.

"I'm a disaster," is what she settles on, exhaling with a little laugh and shaking her head, "And it wouldn't be a Tuesday if I didn't put that on full display, apparently."

There's a chuckle, smoky and low, and the sound of it thrills her. The hand that reaches out to shake hers has incredibly long, taloned, perfectly manicured nails in dark purple that fade to lavender at the tips and perfectly match the taller woman's tie.

"Doctor Moira O'Deorain," comes a name in that wonderful, rolling voice.

Lord. Not her boss. Not her boss's boss. The fucking Head of the Ministry of Genetics. An Oasis Minister. Her boss's boss's boss's boss's boss thrice removed. God, she wanted to die, and forced a smile as if it alone would keep her afloat.

"Jacqueline Vargas," she replies, wondering at how cold the hand in hers feels. "But I go by Jack. It's a pleasure to meet you, Doctor."

 _P.S. You're gorgeous and your hand is cold._ Reign it in, Jack. Get a goddamn grip. _Reign it the fuck in._

 _Why is she leaning down closer?_ Warning bells are going off in the back of her skull.

"You can let go of my hand now," that husky voice sounds near her ear, a hint of humor to it. "And remember to breathe, Miss Vargas."

"Oh. Right," Jacqueline retorts, feeling her ears start to burn again as she slowly releases the taller woman's hand. She notices for the first time that there are implants running along the long, slender digits and disappearing the pressed cuff of the shirt. It is cold to the touch, and her skin warms subly as she withdraws.

She could swear that the taller woman is amused, offers a faint smile and notices with surprise the way those mismatched eyes are studying her features. Something taps her shoulder again, and she jumps slightly, another little chuckle sounding as she introduces, "This is Bix, short for Weetabix."

"What are you working on?" Moira asks, and something shifts in the conversation, turning it more professional - clinical even. "Besides an unauthorized patch that should have been tended to by our medical staff in the infirmary?"

"It's nothing really, Minister," Bix assures, his metallic fingertips tracing over the fresh metal at his side. "Minor workplace accident that Vargas patched up so I could continue my calculations without losing the afternoon."

Merciful god in heaven, he continues, "You should see what else she's working on though, really. It's fascinating. Limited phase technology for omnic soldiers and mecha armor. It's been quite successful in field testing so far."

Jacqueline snaps back into reality at the shop talk, moving to pick up a piece of mecha armor from a nearby workstation and carry it over, setting it beside Bix on the tabletop. 

"Officially, I've been modifying the parameters to account for a shift of surface light. It's a new polymer," Jack elaborates, trying not to think about how close the other woman is standing to her shoulder now. "You know how in vids, you can always see that sort of vague shimmer when there's a cloaked omnic or mech? Like a mirage almost. This cuts the effect by thirty percent in the prototype phase."

"Impressive," Moira answers, though there's no indication as to whether she means it. Jack feels her lean a little closer to look down at the piece of mecha armor, and tries not to think about it. "And what about unofficially, Miss Vargas?"

"Advanced cloaking and combat optics," the words are out of her mouth before she can think about it. Her dark eyes shift up toward those lightly freckled features as she admits, "I've been able to cut the mirage effect almost entirely in personal field tests outside of Junkertown, but the polymer that I use has is highly unstable at certain phases of the mixing stage. I use it on my mech in the Junkertown arena."

She pauses then, adds, "It requires some regulation bending that isn't strictly above the table. Hit or miss."

"And what quantifies a miss?" a hand settles lightly on her shoulders, and she can feel the cool end of nails agains the skin. Jack tilts her head subtly to the side, curiously noting that the complexion of that hand is tinged in violet, veins of implanted metal that wind up toward the elbow like the roots of a flowering creeper. 

"May I?" Jack asks instead, her dark eyes flicking pointedly from the other's hand to their eyes. Mismatched, the one scarlet and the other blue. Striking. There's a moment in which they widen, ever-so-slightly, in surprise, and then the expression fades, replaced by a mask of cool collectedness that the other seems to wear like armor. A long moment of silence stretches on before those long digits uncurl from her shoulder and the arm is cautiously extended.

"A thirty foot crater in the outback where my old tech bunker used to be," Jacqueline remarks, her touch already roving as she inspects the implant with her fingertips, surprised at how cold the flesh is. She feels a flinch in the lean musculature beneath her fingertips as she does. Her brow knits subtly, and she asks, "Did that hurt?"

"Pardon? No," comes the taller woman's response, which doesn't sufficiently explain the flinch to her. "There is little sensation in the limb. It's quite dulled."

With little pretense, she draws the doctor over nearer to the workstation and hops up onto its edge, pulling that arm into her lap as she leans over to grab a datapad. When the taller woman starts to withdraw, Jack simply curls a hand around her wrist to indicate that she hasn't finished. Bix hops down after a moment, and while he seems dubious that she isn't about to make a _complete_ ass of herself, he confides in a synthesized voice, "Grab you ladies some coffee?"

"I think there's still some Nano Cola in the fridge, I'd take one of those," Jack remarks, and feels as secondary flinch beneath her fingertips as she inspects a particularly interesting section of the implant on the underside of the wrist, halting what is, she supposes, a rather tactile inspection of the metalwork to ask, "You're sure that doesn't hurt?"

"Positive, Miss Vargas," comes a drawled response, the taller woman looking a little guarded at the question, though she does not protest the continued inspection, simply arching a brow sharply when Jack unbuttons the cuff of her sleeve and rolls it up quite carefully to inspect the forearm. "You are very bold, aren't you?"

Then, to Weetabix, "I would take a black coffee. Please and thank you."

 _It's fascinating. What is she supposed to say?_ That amaranth-tinged skin is colder than it should be, but the muscle beneath it is still tensile, functioning, reactive to the touch. The implant melds seamlessly alongside the veins, muted silver drawing some attention from their dull indigo, and branches up the arm in fractals that remind her of a Lichtenberg figure. 

"I've been called worse," Jack remarks with a soft snort of amusement, ghosting her fingertips over the metalwork and cool skin in an odd, if functional habit, she supposes. The pads of her fingers stroke over the forearm and its implanted technology, mapping it out through tactile sensation so she can draw it. "This is bloody brilliant. Would you mind if I asked how you managed it? What happened? I don't see any scar tissue, so I assume it wasn't a trauma of some kind?"

For a moment, it appears that the taller woman may withdraw at that, but the arch of a red-gold brow only becomes more pronounced, and O'Deorain asks, "Are we not supposed to be discussing your work, Miss Vargas?"

A glint of mirth in her dark eyes, Jack looks up to meet the other's and asks with vague amusement, "Call me Jack. Please. And are you really all that interested in applied cloaking tech? Because this is a lot more interesting than slapping a coat of fancy primer on a mech. You could call it humoring me, or if pressed, inter-departmental collaberation?"

There's the barest hint of a smirk at the corner of Moira's lips at that, one that she could have missed if she hadn't been looking for it, and the taller woman advises, "The result of a miscalculated experiment. An attempt to revolutionize applied nanotechnology, which ultimately succeeded, but not without the obvious side effect."

"And you constructed all this yourself?" Jack asks, a gentle pressure applied as she moves toward the palm, brushing a touch over the circular disc upon the palm of the hand. 

"The base schematics, yes. They follow the nerve structure in the arm and support it. It was necessary to save the limb from necrosis and maintain a semblance of functionality, then heavily modified afterwards," that rolling voice informs her, sounding like a wave crashing on the rocks of a far-away island. "I must admit surprise at the genuine interest. Most are appalled by the appearance. I suppose it is all very Frankenstein and his monster to those who cannot fathom its place in the grand scheme of scientific discovery."

A thousand thoughts careen through Jacqueline's mind all at once, like fireflies in a dark field and she's a child with a jar, hoping to catch them just long enough to witness them up close and release them into the night again. Like candles flickering in the dark windows of a distant house, or constellations, vast fields of starlight whorling in and out of view based on one's view of the sky of their swiftly tilting planet. 

_What if. How could._ It maps out a web of possibilities, each more daring than the next, and she weaves them together, struggling to untangle the variables of their tangled ends. It leads her to the same place - she has a thousand questions. She wants them all answered. 

Leaning over to catch up her datapad again, she props it on her thigh and picks up the pen, already tracing a vague approximation of the limb in real time, while her other hand traces the back of knuckles, seeing through feeling the contrast between cold skin and colder metal. 

"Invention," Jack states slowly, a little distractedly, "It must be humbly admitted, does not consist of creating out of the void, but of chaos." 

She follows with a curious, "Why this alloy in particular - a titanium derivative? Reactivity?"

Moira tilts her head slowly to the side at that, mismatched eyes sweeping over the slighter woman in a way that, Jack, occupied as she is with her sketch, cannot see. Weetabix does. Were he to liken it to anything, he would say either a hawk contemplating a mouse in a field, or perhaps an entomologist inspecting an insect that had suddenly become fascinating, just before pushing a pin through it to capture it on canvas.

Something dangerous flits behind heterochromatic eyes as they observe his friend, and the doctor observes, "Mary Shelley. And yes, it was determined that the lesser alloy would be too reactive due to the internal structures beneath. My arm may have rejected it."

There's a distinct pause, a subtle flexing of the talons in Jacqueline's grasp, and the taller woman leans a hip against the workstation, seeming to relax a measure before remarking in like kind, "Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world."

He's nervous, he realizes, when Jacqueline looks up at the taller woman, a genuine smile curled over her features. There are words that would have been more appropriate to fall from the doctor's lips, if the rumors he has heard are true - and her tall frame looming over the slighter Junker - he doesn't know how to voice them, but thinks them all the same. 

_I collected bones from charnel houses; and disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame._

Be careful, rabbit. 

He knows she won't be.


	2. i met you in the lion's den, count to ten

Jacqueline has always had difficulty focusing, at least until she didn't. It was an all or nothing thing. A handful ideas thrown at the wall with none of them sticking, or a laser-honed attention on one specific for days at a time. Right now, her mind is churning with the latter, the idea a lone ship on the wine-dark, wind-battered sea. The precipice of a breakthrough burns in the back of her mind like acid, fraying the ends of nerves, snap-firing synapses that should have seen the respite of sleep one, two, maybe even three days ago now. A Junker, curled in a chair at her drafting table, fueled by a growing pile of Nano Cola cans, nutritional shakes, and a variety of legal stimulants.

The thought creeps in unbidden. A familiar mane of blue hair. Hazel eyes framed in the scarlet of ornamental paint for the arena. When they were together, the other had remarked that Jack teetered between genius and madness. She still remembered the taste of dry, outback earth, machine oil - the hot metal of armor chips under her tongue like a penny as she patched the Queen's armor, modified it for another round of brutal combat in Junkertown's Scrapyard. 

_The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success._

Jae was still alive because of it. 

At some point, she realizes that she's stared at the same equation for almost an hour, one leg restlessly jittering. She _should_ be working on her polymer, but instead she's on the cusp of what she knows must be a breakthrough; the branching nerve structure of a forearm implant stretching across her vidscreen, marked with errant notes and potential modifications. A half-dozen formulas for a potential metal alloy, molecular chemistry, brackets and fittings dance behind her eyes like whorls of wild colour. Medical journals that she barely understands are book-ended on her datapad, and she delves into them again and again until their secrets start to whisper, form the adhesive that binds fragmented calculations and compositions in her mind.

When it all clicks together in the early, cold hours of the morning before the sun has risen, Jacqueline rises from her chair with a languid stretch and finds her way to the shower, the scent of citrus and sandalwood washing over her as the weariness seems to bleed its way out of her bones. She never once considers, finding clothes in her closet, pulling on a faded black shirt, dark jeans, the silk-lined leather jacket with scuffs on the elbows from where she wiped out on her hoverbike once on the salt flats, whether or not this is the correct course of action, or even an appropriate one. Combing her fingers through her still-damp hair, she heads down toward the transport station. It takes her almost twenty minutes to find the Genetics building, and another twenty to find the correct laboratory down in the sub-basement. 

Anxiety starts to creep in when her knuckles rap lightly on the door. 

Her heart almost jumps out of her chest when a voice directly behind her inquires in a low, rolling accent, "What are you doing down here, Miss Vargas? Is it not a little early for office visits?"

The words are drawled with this vague satisfaction, and she feels a subtle heat prickle beneath her skin at the other's nearness, knowing that it stains her cheeks and the tips of her ears a little pink when she turns. Her eyes are level with the undone knot of a tie, the first few undone buttons of a neatly-pressed shirt, and she is forced to look up, up, up into a vaguely smug, if unquestionably tired, angular countenance. They're so near that she can see the dusting of freckles on the other's nose, the rich colour of those mismatched eyes, the way that one ginger brow arches as she's looked down upon.

She bites her lip, an unconscious gesture that she can see reflected in the other's eyes, and what she wants to say is _Omnium-synthesized titanium_ but what comes out is much closer to, "Ominaminum."

_Fuck._

"What?" comes a subtly incredulous response, a low chuckle chasing after it. 

Moira smells like bergamot, burnt amber, cigarette smoke and brisk morning air, and the wildfire in her mind is having a little difficulty with the proximity they share now, now that she realizes where she is and what time it is and how glorious and impossibly _tall_ the scientist is. There are freckles on a pale collarbone, and she knows, she _knows_ now that this is how she gets burned. _Like a moth to a fucking flame._

She becomes dimly aware after a moment that cold fingers have grasped her chin, their pressure firm, but surprisingly gentle as they tip her head up to meet the other woman's eyes. There's prompting, "Pay attention, Miss Vargas."

Every instinct in her is screaming at her to do something. Run, maybe. The part of her that cut its teeth in Junkertown wants to hit her. Deck her for putting hands on her. It's what she'd do if she was in Junkertown. Well. One of two options, really. And if whatever flits behind those mismatched eyes is humor, she fucking _knows it_ already. 

What she does instead is remark, feeling the words cut themselves sharply on the edge of her teeth, " _Jack._ And I can't really focus when you're _touching my face_."

"Temper," the taller woman remarks, and there's a low, husky chuckle from her that sends a thrill down the mechanic's spine. She's struck by how different this is than their conversation by the workstations, this is off-kilter, off-balance. Careening wildly out of control. She can feel the edge of one of those taloned nails slide along the line of her jaw, "I'll let you in on a little secret, incidentally, _Jack_. You weren't doing an admirable job of it in the first place."

"Now tell me, what _exactly_ are you doing at my laboratory at three in the morning?" comes the question, slow and surprisingly soft in that faintly husky voice. She feels that talon shift back down her jawline, and she shivers almost instinctively.

Never in all of her life has a plan backfired on her this magnificently. It had seemed like so much better an idea about an hour ago.

"Trying to remember how to say 'Omnium-synthesized titanium'," Jack breathes, and is suddenly aware of how her breath halts when that talon shifts along her jaw again. "Which I have to admit is a little difficult right now."

"Omnium-synthesized titanium," the taller woman demonstrates with an excruciating slowness, and Jack is pretty sure this is its own circle of hell. Maybe the tenth. _Is there a circle beyond the ninth circle of hell?_ She's either going to have a heart attack or spontaneously combust. Probably both. "And this warrants my attention _how_?"

She flicks a glance toward the taller woman's lips, where an infuriating smirk is still lingering. Up. Look up, Vargas. _Look up_. Fuck it. The silk of that lavender tie is soft against her skin as she wraps her hand in it, and instead of leaning up, pulls the other abruptly _down_ , her eyes slipping closed as she does. Moira's lips are soft and cool, flavoured with whiskey and faintly of mint. There's a momentary inhalation, something that isn't quite surprise and isn't quite not.

This is _catastrophic_. 

She knows it even before the hand at her jaw slips from it, instead slipping under it and curving around her throat to press her back against the door, holding her there with surprising force. She knows it when the taller woman steps forward to close the distance, and leans low near her features, mismatched eyes roving over her in the low light. This is the lion's den. She's walked into it willingly. 

_Catastrophic._

And then cool lips meet hers this time, and when Moira pushes _forward_ into her mouth, its even better than she could have imagined. It isn't soft by any stretch of the imagination. No - it's slow and fierce, and it leaves her lips feeling bruised and the curve of the taller woman's mouth stained with cherry red lipstick. That cold hand remains around her throat, and with her shoulders pressed into the door, she finds that when Moira wants her to move, she simply _moves her_.

At the sound of footsteps down the hall, they break apart, the laboratory door opened and the mechanic ushered in wordlessly. It smells faintly of antiseptic, cold, pristine metal in here, and the lights are non-existent, merely a glow from the consoles near the examination tables and scientific equipment. No sooner has the door shut behind them with a 'click' than her shoulders hit this other side of it, and her hands tangle as best they can in fiery red hair as they come together again. God, how has she lived the last two days not knowing that Moira tastes like whiskey and mint?

For a moment, she wonders if Moira can hear her heart hammering in her chest, perhaps feel it from where they're pressed together. She knows it skips a beat when a thigh is pushed between hers, and responds by hooking her own over a slim hip almost on instinct alone at this point, critically aware of how warm it is everywhere they touch. Her skin is on fire, but the hand on her hip is bitingly cold. 

There's an insistence to what they're doing. Chaos, purpose, everything in between when she's lifted up, legs wrapped around the other's hips, and that lean frame is _stronger than it looks_. It's building up to something that definitely shouldn't transpire here, not in the basement lab of the Ministry of Genetics, not with an almost complete stranger, certainly not with an _Oasis Minister_. She doesn't care, repeats that to herself when she's set on the edge of a nearby table, when her fingertips find the buttons on the front of the other's shirt and start to unfasten them. 

All she knows is that it's been a _while_ , and the long fingers tangled in her hair are cold, and that when she abandons the buttons to yank the hem of that shirt out of a belt and slide her fingertips beneath it, that the sculpted lines of that warm and leanly-muscled back feel good under her hands. Her breathing doesn't steady. When the other tests the waters with teeth, teasing beneath the line of her jaw, she inhales sharply and scrapes the blunt end of her nails against that back, and relishes the sound that's uttered against her skin for the effort. Fucking rules are overrated anyways. That's why Junkertown only has _five_. If she smudges the lines, this could fall under 'finder's keepers'. Maybe 'settle your own scores'. Yeah. Probably that.

A chime sounds just as the other's fingertips slip beneath her t-shirt, their warmth and the tips of _those nails_ resting lightly along her hip as a voice announces all-too-calmly in the sudden silence, "Incoming vidcall from Contact 382 - Rialto."

She can feel the other woman's breath, warm and gusting near her jaw, and the way those nails press in slightly, not hard enough to break the skin, and it's _maddening_. That angular jaw tenses, and the other woman turns to stare in the direction of the intercom. Moira replies lowly, her voice somehow huskier than before, with authority, "Postpone - I will vidcall back at five."

"Reschedule declined," comes that eerily calm voice. 

The sound of frustration in the other's chest is palpable, reverberates before those hands are off of her, their absence painfully evident. Her t-shirt is wrinkled, and the taller woman's hair is mussed, a smear of red lipstick on those hauntingly pale features. Tension is evident in lean shoulders as Moira takes two steps toward a nearby console to inspect the message, then looks over her shoulder to confide, "I have to take this." A muscle draws a measure more taut in that cheek, "I don't know how long it will be."

Jack's dark eyes follow the taller woman, rove over that rumpled shirt, breath still a bit unsteady as she responds, "Alright."

The other nods once, before all but stalking back toward the office, the placard reading _Dr. Moira O'Deorain_ gleaming dimly in the low illumination. Something flits in those mismatched eyes before Moira turns to look at her once more, stating in a matter-of-fact fashion, "Tomorrow. I will pick you up at seven o'clock sharp. Wear something nice, Miss Vargas."

That voice is going to be the death of her, she decides, her dark eyes cast over those unsettlingly sharp features as if to commit them to memory. Moira doesn't look away when the communicator chimes once more, but directs in a no-nonsense manner, albeit not unkindly, "See yourself out."

Shutting the door behind herself with a soft 'click', Moira makes her way over to her desk, pouring out a half-glass of whiskey from one of the amber bottles in her desk and tipping it back in one go, the glass clinking atop the polished metal when she sets it down upon her desk. The vidscreen activates several seconds later, the imposing countenance of Akande Ogundimu filling the far wall of her office.

"We have a situation," he announces in a low, resonant voice.

"So it would appear," she retorts coolly, an eyebrow arching sharply as he appears to squint for a moment.

He gestures toward his face, amusement a treacherous current in that deep voice as he states, "You have a bit of...ah. Lipstick, Doctor."

Moira sits back in her chair at that, countenance revealing little as she looks back at him; she uses the heel of her hand to clear a smudge of red from the corner of her mouth, starting to refasten the undone buttons near the collar of her shirt as she reiterates simply, "So it would appear."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> She makes bad decisions. Frequently.


	3. the girl who cried wolf, i come when she tell me to

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we discover that Jack's family are also all assholes, and so is her ex.  
> Posting two in one go since a good chunk of this turned out Jack-centric/character-buildy and I have a problem.

Heading back to her apartment takes more effort than she thought, as she nearly misses the stop _twice_ before realizing that they've looped back toward the Ministry buildings and has to hop out three stops away, walking back as the sun starts to illuminate the far horizon. Her communicator buzzes softly as she crests the street, the scent of baking bread wafting from somewhere in the small marketplace nearby. It smells amazing. 

m.odeorain: An important matter has come up that requires my immediate attention. I will need to reschedule. Are you available on Thursday at seven, Miss Vargas?

_Miss Vargas. Jesus._

She stops for a roll and a cup of lukewarm coffee that she pours entirely too much sugar into, still wrinkling her nose at the taste as she drops into a corner booth. How does she have this number? Probably in her personal file, she supposes. And of course Moira would type with perfect fucking grammar, capitalization, all that shit. Jack finds herself unconsciously touching the sore spot beneath her jaw where the other's teeth rasped, and takes another sip of coffee as if that might help her parse the events of the morning.

There's a distinct part of her that wants to find whoever called earlier and kick their teeth in. Instead, her fingertips find the comm unit in between bites of warm bread and sips of too-sweet coffee.

ja.vargas: its still just jack  
ja.vargas: im free on thursday  
m.odeorain: Grand. I anticipate a riveting conversation about omnium-synthesized titanium.

_Fucking hell. I bet you do, O'Deorain._

Jack finishes the roll, but not the coffee, and when she finally makes her way up the steps to her apartment, it's two, then three at a time. Then down the hall toward her bedroom to kick her boots off beneath the drafting desk. Falling back onto the duvet with the communicator still in hand, she can almost feel cold fingertips on her hip, the faint sting where teeth scraped their way along the skin beneath her jaw. _Stop thinking about it._

God in merciful heaven. Tomorrow was going to be a day. She tries not to think about how whiskey and mint tasted on her teeth. _Yeah, this is going super well._

When she turns the communicator off, she sleeps for almost a day and a half.

She awakes late in the afternoon and languidly warm, tangled in the duvet as gilded light slips through the blinds to stripe over her bed like the sun-drenched bands of a tiger. It takes her a minute to place what day it is. There's a dull ache in her skull, and her mouth feels like the Serengeti. Shit. She reaches for the communicator to see what time it is and breathes a little sound of relief - Thursday: 5:03PM. No new messages. Stretching languidly to relax back atop the mattress, she rubs the heel of her hand to her eye. Today is her dance with the devil. 

There's a part of her that wants to languish in that bed for another thirty minutes, an hour, maybe the rest of the evening, but every time she closes her eyes to rest a little more, a web-work of metal implants stretches behind it. Omnium-synthesized titanium. When she levers up from the blankets, shivering a little at the loss of warmth, gooseflesh breaks out on her copper-tinted skin, and she takes what little solace she'll receive this afternoon by running out the hot water in the shower. A liter of water and a cold Nano Cola under her arm, she pads back over toward the drafting desk shortly after, dropping down into the chair to look over the schematics a bit more. She forces herself to drink the water, really. Hopes that it will take the edge off the massive headache that's brewing from...probably a combination of oversleeping, dehydration, caffeine withdrawal. Take your pick.

Then it's back to the drawing board, sketching out minor adjustments to the scrawled notes in a more methodical fashion. Bringing order out of chaos.

Music.

_I'm like Neo vs. Magneto_  
_Having lightning fights at frightening heights_  
_On the top of Jesus in Rio_  
_I'm Han Solo mixed with CeeLo_  
_Smoke Greedo on the D-Low_  
_And when Macca spits I'm immaculate_  
_'Cause I can decode the human genome_

There we go. Get some good vintage Australian hip hop going. Paora loved this shit, and she had to admit that she did too. She really should call him. Maybe she will. Sitting back at her desk, she flicks on the vidscreen and waits for him to pick up on the other line.

"Oi, Jack." There he is. The eldest of her 'little' brothers. Paora favours their mother, his complexion even a little darker than her own now that she spends so much time in a basement garage instead of out in the back stretches of mesa and scrub, and his flaxen hair is wildly curled, coated in a fine layer of red-dust. Must be windy outside. "You look like shit. Too clean, chica. Gonna lose your edge living all the way out there in _Posh Town_."

Jack can't not laugh at that, though she lifts her middle finger as she takes a sip of her Nano Cola, "It's called a shower, Pao. I know you like to roll around in the dirt like a goddamn jerboa, but sometimes you gotta clean up a little, yeah? Girls like it."

"Ooh," he counters in a laughter-laced voice, his grin broad and bright as she watches him sort through a box of brackets. " _Sanding off all your rough edges_ and chasing sheilas now. Atta girl. What you been up to?"

"About to come down there and knock you on your ass on principle, cricket," Jack retorts, snorting softly with amusement. Otherwise, she rolls her shoulders, takes another sip of cola and feels the carbonation burn in her throat. "Been working like a dog. Sending home creds for my ungrateful siblings. You know. The usual." She tacks on as if it may be important, "They haven't fired all of us yet. Down to seven or so though."

"I got a bet with Danny that it's six by the end of the week. Do somethin' stupid for your little brother, yeah?" he shoots back with a shit-eating grin.

She snorts in response, shifting forward in her chair a little as she picks up her schematics, working on them while they talk, the same way he's elbows deep in what she assumes from the garage is a hoverbike, "How's mom and the boys?"

"Mama's been tryin' to talk them into dropping the charges in Sydney so she can visit with Nik at uni," Paora answers, rubbing his forehead with the back of his hand and leaving a smear of machine oil behind. "So she's right crook about everything, really. You know they aren't gonna make exceptions for ex-A.L.F."

God, they wouldn't either. Jack rubs the side of her face with the back of her hand almost impulsively, adjusting a calculation on the screen to account for increased conductivity in the nerves only to curl her lip when it makes the model go critical in three places simultaneously.

"Boys're good though, the little ones have been asking about you a bunch," Paora answers, swearing softly when he hits his knuckles on the exhaust. "They miss you, yeah? We all do. You hear that they gave Nik a full ride to uni for football?"

"Oh, no shit," Jack flicks her eyes up from the datapad at that. Good for him. Kid always was good at football. "I knew he was trying to get in. Have a list of what he needs for uni yet, mate?" Her head tilts sharply as Paora shakes his head, then flinches a little when reaching for a nearby tool, and she asks, "Oi, cricket. You really supposed to be doing all that? How's it healing up?"

"Get off my ass about it, it's fine," he retorts when he looks up at the vidscreen, but soon the corners of his mouth curl into an impossible grin, dark eyes bright as he asks, "You want to see?"

She's worked it back to two critical points, makes an adjustment. _For fuck's sake._ Five critical points now. Her head hits the back of the chair and she tosses the datapad on the table for now, nodding instead, as she focuses in on her brother. 

"Gonna get a real slick tattoo once it's a little less tender, yeah?" Paora advises with a grin, shrugging his tank-top over his head to show off his newly flat chest, the one she took her Oasis job to help him pay for. He looks proud. Excited. *Comfortable*. Good. "No scars or anything, yeah? Looks right fit, ain't it?"

Jack can't quite help the mischievous grin that curls over her lips in the dim light, and she's still grinning ear to ear still when she asks, "You have those pecs this whole time, cricket? Jesus. Looks like you've been bench-pressing hoverbikes."

He turns with practiced slowness, kissing his bicep before winking a dark eye at her, and she can't help the loud laugh that follows, accusing with mirth, "You fucking showboat. Don't get a tattoo from Wolf, either. Danny's better with a needle. He did my rabbits."

She makes a mental note to transfer him some extra creds after her next check, once she makes sure that she's got Nik's texts, equipment - whatever college boys need - taken care of. 

They both jump as something's knocked over in the background, the rattling cascade of metal and machine parts deafening as Paora swears, "Fuckin' hell. Oi, you little tossers, I need th-" There's silence as the vidscreen flickers, the communicator caught presumably in someone's hands, and she hears muffled, "How's it, Jae? Yeah. Got Jack on the line if you little ones want to say hi."

"Returning these," the familiar, rough-edged voice of her ex in the background. Lovely. It's nostalgic in a way that she doesn't like anymore, and she taps her datapen on the edge of the desk as it conjures up a wide variety of emotions in her. They're civil now. Mostly. _Friendly with edges_ is what she'd call it if she had to find words. "Found them crawling all over Hammond's mech."

Another fumbling of the comm unit, the vidscreen dark, and then it brightens to reveal Tama, all of what...he has to be seven now. He's upside down, his dark curls hanging almost to the floor as he grins cheekily as he complains, " _Jaaack._ Jack, she won't let us play with Hammond."

He shifts the comm slightly, and she can see that he's quite clearly being held under someone's admittedly firmly-muscled arm like a log, a metal and leather pauldron capping the tanned shoulder it belongs to. Shit. She tastes metal chips under her tongue, bright and hot, tries to forget, tries instead to focus on how that arm jostles him lightly and elicits a loud, gleeful laugh from the boy.

A grunt before that familiar voice sounds once more, "And why won't I let you play with Hammond, you little shit?"

"She said shit," Tama confides in an overly-loud whisper, before the comm is taken out of his hand.

"Give me that," another clatter, and she receives a close-up view of firm-boned features and hazel eyes, a tanned complexion devoid of its typical red paint but still harboring the sly curl of a wolfish smile. Those eyes flick over her momentarily before there's a snort of mirth, "Hey princess. You look like shit."

"Not sleeping much," Jack answers, and it's not a lie, as she folds her arms behind her head and leans back in the chair. 

There's a pause, that wolfish smile curving wider, whiter, before the other comments, "You want to come down to 'town this weekend? Get some rest in your own bed? I'll tuck you in and everything."

Jack snorts at that, nods toward the screen as she asserts pleasantly enough, "Not a chance in hell."

There's an appraising look, and Jae looks pretty self-assured despite this, a wicked mirth in those hazel eyes as the other observes, lifting Timoti up by the back of her shirt, "Well, I guess I have to kill your family now. Should I start with this one first?"

"I didn't even pull Hammond's whiskers," the boy laments, his arms crossing over his slim chest as he looks at his captor. He matter-of-factly adds, "You should kill Tama."

"Hey!" the other boy protests. 

"You could kill them both," Jack offers, tossing her datapen at her desk when someone knocks on her door. Chance's voice is muffled against the music and the bickering twins, but she could swear she hears _package_ somewhere in the mix. She tacks on as she walks to the door, "Then I don't have to buy them any birthday presents."

"Jaaack," the twins are a clamor in the background as Chance drops a parcel into her hands, unwrapped, a plain white box that she certainly didn't order. He snorts at the sound of children in the background, though he shoots her a sympathetic look as he spots the vidscreen and mouths, "Jae?"

Offering little else but a shake of her head, she exhales slowly when he shuts the door, and turns back toward her drafting desk to drop down in her chair. The twins are still screaming bloody murder, and she flicks a look at the vidscreen to ask, "Could you kill them quicker? I have a headache."

Another sip of cola before she brushes her fingertips over the top of the box, hooking them under the edge to peer inside. Whatever is inside is shimmeringly gold. Fabric. A note perched atop it, which she unfolds to read as she sets the lid aside. 

_There were last minute adjustments necessary to our evening plans. The destination has a dress code. - M_

A low whistle sounds from her as she half-listens to the bickering in the background, one of the boy's shouting as he clings to Jae's leg, and Paora trying to get them away from his hoverbike. She pulls it out to run her thumbs over the fabric - definitely a dress. Halter cut, knee-length if she's guessing, and made out of some cloth that she can't place, but is _fucking soft_ to the touch. She's willing to bet that it cost more than she wants to think about right now.

"Bold move, Cotton," she muses aloud in a soft cadence, more to herself than anyone else. And probably a wise one, she realizes as she flicks a look at her closet. The only dress she owns is at least ten years old and hanging in the back, behind what mostly constitutes dark t-shirts and jeans in various stages of having been actively worn in a machine shop. 

"Pao, gotta drop vid a sec and get ready for a thing later, I'll leave audio up," Jack advises, and does just that, feeling a little overwhelmed of a sudden. She makes her way over toward the closet, rifling through a few bins for suitable underwear to wear with...whatever that fucking dress is. Lord. She can taste whiskey and mint on the back of her teeth.

She settles on something in dark red. It'll match her lipstick, and she's fairly certain that it's going to be _seen_ at some point on their evening out. Stepping into the bathroom just in case, she strips out of her t-shirt and sleep shorts to pull on the undergarments in question, then slides that dress over her head, smoothing the front of it. It fits fucking a-right enough. She's not sure she wants to question where her measurements are on record to tell that it would, or how _that woman found them_ in the first place.

A dark smoky eye with a hint of gold. Dark cherry lipstick. It's not difficult to complete while she whiles away the time with her brothers on the line. It isn't until she looks in the mirror that she decides something is missing. And while there's something dangerously attractive about O'Deorain's obvious power move with the dress, which looks lovely, she isn't certain she wants the other to forget that she's a Junker. Maybe it's the conversation she's been having, the reminder of home. She settles the matter by adding her jacket to it, black leather and gold a sharp accent to one another. There we go.

She's had it for ages, since she and her dad put together her first hoverbike in the sweltering heat of the outback and raced it over the salt flats until the engine overheated. There's still a scuff on one elbow where she skidded across the ground, before they hopped back to it, found a way to improvise a patch and get home. The leather smells faintly of machine oil still, salt, the dry earth of the outback, and the presence of it is comforting. On the back, picked out in black and blue thread, a lanky black rabbit mid-leap is framed by the words _Junkertown Jackrabbit_. Better. As a final accent, she adds a ring - slender and embossed with a skull - to the knuckle of her pointer finger. It feels heavy. Cold. Familiar. She took it in the arena, a small prize for a hard fight well won.

Dropping her nail kit on the desk and pulling out a black lacquer to start with, she flicks the vid back on and finds a seat at the draft desk once more, hearing Paora let out a low whistle before he asks, "Who the hell are you f-"

" _Do not_ finish that sentence in front of my little brothers," Jack retorts without needing to hear him finish. She points a knuckle at him, "Little brothers. One - children present. Two - Jae is present. Three - she's a doctor, and it's just dinner."

That's a fucking lie. She knows it. She's pretty sure he knows it. From the look on her face, Jae knows it.

Arrowhead nails, she thinks, excepting the middle two which she leaves close to the fingertip and buffed smooth. The price we pay. The polish is glossy and dark, shimmers in an iridescent way that reminds her of machine oil. Two coats and then a clear lacquer, she thinks. Maybe an edge of gold to match the dress? Yeah, that'll do.

There's a snort from Jae onscreen, one of the twins - Tama? - slung over her shoulder again as the Junker confirms, "You wear that dress around, bunny, and I will _definitely_ be present, and we can _definitely_ play doctor."

Count to ten. Count to ten, Jack. She forces herself to as she carefully paints each nail and then moves on to the other hand. She counts to ten and then counts to ten again, trying to ignore the dim hum in the back of her skull that sounds like fire crackling, that smells like smoke and burning metal.

"Tell me why I dated you again?" Jack asks blithely, rolling her shoulders slightly when she feels phantom shrapnel prickle over them. A dark brow arched as she holds Jae's gaze, she keeps her voice pleasant despite the memories of the Scrapyard that are making an old, insidious anger rear its head. Four...five...six...

"Because you like it when I-" the other woman drawls with a wolfish tilt to her smile, showing altogether too many teeth.

"Do not finish that sentence," Jack all but bites out as her head snaps up, looking the other dead in the eyes. "Not a _fucking word_ , Jaeden."

The laugh that elicits from the Junker, who knows exactly what she's doing at this point, is genuine and loud, its edges rough. It's followed by a chorus of 'oohs' by the twins, and murmured accusations that she's utilized a _bad word_. It's not the first time. 

Jack makes a displeased sound in the back of her throat, layering on another coat of lacquer before inspecting her handiwork. 

"You asked?" Jae retorts with a smirk, and if the look in those hazel eyes are any indication, she knows exactly how much Jack wants to punch it off her in that moment. Toned arms fold over the blue-haired woman's chest and she observes cockily, "Been a while since I got the full name treatment, _bunny_."

She wonders if Jae can see the way a muscle in her jaw has gone tight, and the glimmer of mirth in those hazel eyes is an indication that the other has, as is the _fucking wink_ afterwards. Jack exhales slowly, tapping the ends of her freshly-painted nails on the desk. Count to ten. _Don't let her get under your skin again, Jack._ Even though you know she already has.

"Anyway," she counters, sitting back in her chair and arching a brow as her thoughts steady. "What do you little brats want for your birthday? No weapons" She points at them warningly, "Nothing that can be used as a weapon."

"Aww," Tama intones, a frown on his features.

Their heads duck together as she works on the gold edges, and after a conference of twinspeak, Timoti announces for both of them, "We want a brumby."

She blinks at that, looks at Paora, who seems similarly surprised by the request. More conferring. 

"Two brumbies," Tama clarifies, holding up two fingers as if to show her. "So we don't gotta share."

It's about time for her to head out, she realizes with a glance at the clock, and their timing honestly couldn't be much better. She needs a little bit of time to figure out how she's going to weasel them down to something...manageable. A dog maybe? A cat would be more self-sufficient. Probably survive better.

As if it were the perfect moment for it, she blinks and confides, "Oh no, it looks like our connection is going out..." and makes a crackling sound with the nearby parchment as she covers the comm with one hand. The twins react as they always do, clamoring to run over toward the comm unit and hold it up as if they may get better service.

She hears one of them call out, "Get us a brumby! Jack, we want a brumby!"

"I love you," she whispers with a smile yet curled over her features. "Have a good night, boys."


	4. no don't, don't come around acting like you're a saint

The apartment smells overwhelmingly of pizza and beer outside her room, Galveston and Chance settled on the couch in the living room, a mixture of intense concentration and periodic shouts about the latest call in the football match in Sydney. She moves toward the fridge, bringing them another six-pack before perching on the arm of the sofa to wait. 

"Sydney and Brazil?" she asks as the commercials switch on.

"Yeah. Hot damn," Chance remarks as he peers over at her. "Where you off to, princess?"

"Dinner," she answers, lifting her shoulder slightly. 

It's hard not to smile when his tanned face breaks into a cheeky grin, "That mean I get your share of beer?"

"What'll you give me for it?" Jack asks with amusement, though her dark eyes flick downward when Chance's hand catches hers, his calloused fingertips warm as he runs them over the edged nails and then the flat ones, lingering on the smooth edges.

Releasing her just as suddenly, he fishes a slice of pizza out of the box and observes with amusement, "Those are sex nails. That's _gay_ , Jacqueline."

She raises her middle finger for his benefit, answering with amusement, "I'm gay, LaChance." With a sort snort of amusement, she adds, "You aren't doing yourself any favours on the beer front."

"Big mood," Chance counters, though he leans forward to take one of the unopened cans and crack it open, commenting as he does, "I'm just going to drink it anyways. Who you got a date with?"

"O'Deorain," she answers simply, and checks her jacket pocket for her ID card and credit chip out of habit.

"You're a fucking _disaster_ , Vargas," Chance replies, a laugh escaping him as he takes a first, frothy sip of the beverage. "Moira fucking O'Deorain? The Ice Queen of R&D?"

Galveston's hazel eyes slip toward her; he looks tired but in good spirits as he comments, "I'm still not over _criminally gorgeous_ on the open comm. I'm surprised you didn't open with _I'd climb her like a tree_ , given your track record though. Still. Jae not bad enough for you?"

"I already had to talk to Jae today, so let's not ruin my day any further," Jack shoots back, ruffling Chance's hair a bit more. Once it's light brown and blonde curls are a mess, she advises, "And I didn't know it was O'Deorain, thank you. No one told me she was brilliant and _fucking gorgeous_. Or that your dumb ass was going to put her on our commline, Gal."

She tips her head toward Galveston then, "Or send her over to my workstation. Although...thanks, I guess?"

The other Junker gives a little flourish of his hand, ducking his head in a mock-bow before sinking back into his seat and adding with a chuckle, "You should have seen your face. Oh my god. You looked like your soul left your body when she came over there to talk to you. Like you were having a real spiritual experience for a minute or two."

"O'Deorain can take me to church anytime she likes, Gal," Jack replies smoothly, looking at her nails for a moment, mirth touching her voice from their pleasant banter. She drawls out with a hint of coy wink, "Down on my knees and everything."

Galveston chokes on his beer, having to lean forward as he laughs, and getting a fair amount of it on the floor. 

"God is a woman," Chance announces at that, lifting his own can like a toast and affirming, "That'll be three Hail Marys and one Our Father." His grin widens as he jests, "Daddy O'Deorain?"

They all jump visibly at the sound of a knock on the door. Chance takes a pull from his beer, scrambling up to his feet to peer through the peephole, "Shit. Oh _shit_."

He's so red that his face is almost purple now, voice horrified as he mouths, "Did she hear me call her Daddy O'Deorain?"

_Fucking hell_. He has a fair point. The door isn't that thick. Galveston broke it once falling into it when he and chance came home three sheets to the wind. Jack rises to her feet, a tinge of colour certainly evident to her coppery complexion as well if the light burn at her cheekbones is any indication. She shoves him out of the way, inquiring in a low whisper, "You want me to ask?"

"Don't you fucking dare," he hisses back as he scrambles back toward the couch.

When she opens the door, her ears still burning a little at the implication, she finds a pale, faintly freckled sternum at eye level, having to follow it up, up, up, to the angular cast of Moira O'Deorain's features in a slow movement. She's unprepared for how unsettling and beautiful the taller woman looks in that moment, especially when those mismatched eyes meet hers, the pupils dilating slightly. That impossibly tall, marble column of a woman is wearing a suit jacket and trousers of white linen, but no shirt beneath it, and while the buttons are fastened, it leaves a _substantial_ amount of freckled skin visible in the best possible way. 

Everything about Moira is stunning. A slender necklace of gold shimmers where it falls in the valley between her breasts, a white and gold pocket square is folded in her jacket's breast pocket. It strikes her in that moment that there's no way that she's making it through dinner with the taller woman dressed like that. Not a chance in hell. Somewhere in the distant past, her teenage self is curled up in the tin trailer in the middle of the outback, screaming into a pillow at her present self's luck. Her present self is _fucking smitten_. 

After almost a full minute of stunned silence, in which she simply stands frozen, one hand on the door still as her dark eyes search the taller woman's features, Moira mercifully - perhaps not that mercifully, because now she knows that the other smells like bergamot and burnt amber and sweet smoke all over again - leans down to murmur intimately in the shell of her ear, "While I appreciate the sentiment, Jacqueline, I am not particularly religious."

She's fairly certain that she forgets how to breathe at that, and she _knows_ her ears are burning now. God. This night is off to a stellar start. And she usually _hates it_ when people call her that, but she wants to hear it again - in a vast range of contexts, some of which are decidedly untoward. It's all she can do in that moment not to take the taller woman by the wrist and pull her down the hall toward her room, end their evening early, Chance and Gal and Bix be damned. Her thoughts are scattered everywhere, glinting like metal in the red sand of her mind. 

"Focus," there are cool fingertips on her skin again, lightly grasping her chin to direct her attention from whatever rabbit hole it's spiraled down. "Count to ten. Take a breath." Her eyes drift closed, and she does. "Grand."

Glancing up through dark lashes when her eyes slip back open, Jacqueline settles fingertips lightly to the other's side, answers back, "Whose fault was that, O'Deorain?"

There's a smirk. A breathy chuckle as that voice answers smoky and rich, low with the promise of something, "I could speculate if you like, but I suspect it would take an in-depth study to know for certain." Less clinical, and more personal, "You look lovely."

Her thumb strokes the soft linen of that suit, and all she can think at that moment is, "So do you. You want to come in?"

There's a low, sound, not quite a scoff and not a chuckle from the taller woman's chest at the statement, and Moira sinks back slightly to meet her gaze, "No. I want you to come out."

Then there's something calculating behind those mismatched eyes as they sweep over here, as if _deciding something_ , and her pulse jumps a little when the taller woman smirks, leans a little closer to advise succinctly, "Why don't you bring an overnight bag. I'll wait."

The sound of Chance dropping his beer in the living room is deafening in the silence that follows, reminds her that the door is still open, and that her asshole roommates are probably watching all of this transpire. She can't really blame him, though. If she had something in her hands, she'd probably have broken it at that statement. 

Her eyes lock with Moira's at that, both of them standing in the doorway for several seconds as if trying to discern who's going to move. Lifting her chin in a nod, she waits until the other leans back slightly to step into the apartment, trying not to think about the implications and having a _hell of a time_ not doing just that. 

_Fuck._

As she heads down the hallway, she hears a perfunctory, polite, "Gentlemen," from near the door.

There's a battered paramilitary backpack that her mother gave her in the corner of the closet, and while she has no idea what she's doing or what fresh hell she's gotten herself into, it'll have to do. Two sets of clothes, something to sleep in, her boots. God. _Bold fucking move, indeed._

The taller woman is leaned slightly forward when she returns, her head craning around the doorway and eyes locked coolly with Chance's, looking calm and collected in a way that Jacqueline certainly doesn't _feel_ at the moment. 

Another polite, "Good evening," from O'Deorain to the assorted Junkers, her head craning around the door to offer a nod, before an arm is offered. She takes it, allows herself to be guided down the sidewalk and into the backseat of a car. 

It feels like walking into the mouth of the devil.


	5. i'll give you my best side, tell you all my best lies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So starts the fifty billion chapters of what are they even doing.  
> They don't know.

They sit across from one another in the backseat of Moira's car, the privacy window up and the omnic chauffeur headed into the heart of Oasis as they make small talk. She tries not to think about how long Moira's legs are, or the way they are casually threaded through hers since they're not sitting on the same side of the car. Not quite touching her, but she knows they're there and that it wouldn't take a significant amount of effort.

When the taller woman lights a cigarette, the fire illuminates her countenance in the dim light, casting over her features to make their sharp planes sharper and angular cast all the more dramatic. 

"Junkertown Jackrabbit?" the taller woman asks with an exhalation, smoke coiling around her features ominously in the dark. "Do they name all of you after animals for a specific reason or is it some manner of call sign? I'll admit that I have never understood the obsession with the latter."

She isn't quite able to tear her eyes away from the occasional flickers of light as they pass under street lamps, illuminating Moira's features in brief intervals before they are shrouded in darkness once more. 

"Only the good ones get nicknames," she answers, trying to stop from searching those features again in the limited light. 

There's a scoff in the dark, the sound becoming familiar to her, but it isn't without a hint of mirth, "Allow me to express my condolences and concerns if _Junkrat_ and _Roadhog_ are 'the good ones', Jacqueline."

"Consider it local Junker charm, O'Deorain," Jack shoots back, watching the taller woman take another drag. _I wish I was that cigarette_. Jesus Christ, Jack. Focus. She counts to ten, then counts to ten again, tapping out the numbers on the armrest as she goes. "If those are the first that jump to mind, you haven't even heard of the good ones yet. Wolf Wood? Magpie? Dingo? Dropbear Danny?"

There's a look at that, as if Moira is attempting to discern whether or not she's serious. 

"It's the name of my arena mech - Jackrabbit," she clarifies with vague amusement at the other's expression, a smirk curling the corner of her lips. "On account of the long legs. It's a refurbished scout mecha from the A.L.F. with some heavy modificat-" Starting to pull up a model of her mecha on her communicator, she pauses and adopts a wry smile, "How much do you really want to hear about experimental scout mecha tonight?"

Moira tilts her head a scant measure, another puff of smoke breathed out through the cracked window. Slipping the cigarette into a receptacle, she crooks a finger in the Junker's direction as she replies, "Come here. Your work within the Ministry is not without promise. I would be disappointed if your extracurriculars were not similar intriguing."

Grasping one of the handles overhead, Jack shifts forward, trying not to pay attention to how she has to extricate her legs from the other's in order to settle on the seat beside Moira, rather than across from her. The scent of cigarette smoke and brisk, evening air, dry as the desert , strikes her as she comes to rest beside the other.

As the schematics flicker to life on the improvised holoscreen, a long arm comes to rest around her shoulders and that tall creature leans nearer, presumably to better view the image. Dark eyes flicking over those angular features as they draw nearer hers, Jacqueline soon glances back toward the schematic, pivoting the image to confide, "This was an old scout and recon mecha, they used them a lot after the A.L.F. detonated the omnium, safer to scavenge and fight in because of the radiation levels. I scavenged most of the additions from near the omnium or abandoned military installations."

"This is where you utilized the polymer you spoke of?" that low voice asks near her ear, and the hair on the back of her neck stands up.

"I wasn't entirely honest about that," Jacqueline admits, flicking a dark glance sidelong as a smirk curls the corner of her mouth. "Marks likes to eavesdrop and I fucking hate him, so I don't get into it often at work. The one I submitted to Oasis tech mitigates the mirage effect by thirty percent." She queues up a video, the audio a muffled hail of pulse munitions fire as the JKRBT mecha bolts around the low wall of the omnium and simply blinks from view, not a shimmer or flicker of movement visible. "That's what a hundred looks like. I've managed it twice. This was the second run."

Moira's eyes remain fixed upon the vidscreen, intense and critical in silence, as if attempting to discern something from the video footage.

She zooms out, and they watch for an instant as omnics shout something in the background, not a wisp of dust driven up from the hard red earth, even though she knows the mecha is still moving. Jack tilts her head slightly, indicating the screen to confide, "Sound and impact dampeners on the legs, it prevents the dirt kicking up - when it functions as intended. I'd wager I'm right about...here, now. My little brother took the vid with a drone."

When she moves to click off the vid, Moira intercedes with, "Leave it," and for some reason she does, even though what follows after isn't among her favorite memories. "That's the Australian Omnium, is it not?" 

She inclines her head in acknowledgement, explaining as if it needed to be said, "Hunting for more scrap. They had the same idea, seemed like."

It unfolds on the screen the same way it did in real life, several canisters fired out onto the dry, red earth and detonating almost in unison - the resultant flash of light is blinging, burns out the optics on the drone. The sharp arch of a brow before Moira looks at her, those mismatched eyes questioning.

"Fission grenades," Jacqueline answers dryly, pulling the sleeve of her jacket up to reveal a smooth section of scar on the inside of her wrist, only about the size of an old world half-dollar, with several smaller, circular marks around it. "I got lucky. A few third degree burns, and some emergency surgery to repair my retinas due to flash blindness. It overloaded the power circuits and I had to run in a straight line on back-up power until they stopped chasing after - the highest I've gotten out of my mech since is eighty-five percent."

"If you ever visit Junkertown," Jack confides with dry amusement, "I recommend not sight-seeing around the local omnium. Or carrying much in the way of valuables, honestly. We're all assholes."

"Ah, yes," comes a response from the taller woman, fingertips brushing over the inside of her wrist to inspect the scar with a clinical interest. "Something about finder's keepers and settling your own scores, is it?"

A brow arched, Jack inquires with a pleasant curiosity, "You're familiar?"

"With Junker culture?" the taller woman muses, her cursory inspection of the scar finished as she pulls the sleeve back into place. "Not particularly, though I plan on getting..." Jack watches those mismatched eyes drag up her in the dark, sees the smirk that curls the corner of the other's lips, "You could say better acquainted, if you like." 

"Bold. I bet you say that to all the girls, O'Deorain," Jack retorts, her dark eyes slipping toward the other's lips and then back to those mismatched eyes. They're vivid. 

Moira leans in then, smelling of cigarette smoke and dark, rich cologne. It's cologne that she places now, that carries with it bergamot and burnt amber, a resinous undertone. Catching her lightly by the chin to draw her head forward, she brushes an errant strand of dark hair from Jack's features, then meets her gaze and intones, "Only the brave ones."

Cool and soft, the taller woman presses an almost chaste kiss to the corner of her mouth and confides, "If you keep looking at me like that, Jacqueline, we aren't going to make it to dinner."

A second kiss, also infuriatingly light, "The dress looks nice. I'm glad you wore it."

"You're lucky," Jack retorts, her nose brushing lightly to Moira's, though she doesn't reciprocate. Not yet. The car is slowing to a halt, and as much as she _wants_ to, she knows that if she does, they aren't making it out of the back of it. "I'm not always good at following directions."

Those ocean-and-blood eyes meet hers, and it takes her breath away. They are half-lid and dark beneath coppery lashes, the pupils dilated in the dim light as the taller woman whispers, "You'll have plenty of time to practice later."

It sounds like a promise.


	6. in your eyes there's a heavy blue, one to love and one to lose

Rialto. Of course Moira O'Deorain takes her to _Rialto_ for dinner. 

The transition from the chauffered car to the transport plane came as a surprise, perhaps not as surprising as a Junker in a gondola, of all things, she muses, but it saw them to the restaurant in question. It's beautiful. Seated in a quiet, dimly-lit outdoor booth that overlooks a canal in _Venice_ , it's intimate and out of the way. There's a part of her that's thankful Moira settles beside her and not across from her, largely because she's not sure she could eat anything with their legs laced together like they had been in the car, and another part that's all too aware how warm that slender silhouette is at her side. It's a beautiful view nonetheless.

Jacqueline would not have ventured a guess, based on the opinions of the taller woman around the office, or perhaps based on their...altercation in the labs, that Moira O'Deorain would be a charming conversationalist, but is proven wrong. While the other's remark often border on clinical and cool, they are equally as often insightful, clever, or bear an undercurrent of wicked mirth that you could miss if you weren't looking for it. That you had to chase to see cracks of the woman beneath the outer façade.

Red wine flows between them amidst small samplings of local fare - cheese and grapes, fresh olives, the ends of bread, and somewhere in the midst she learns that Moira's laughter is a wild, wonderful sound that she wants to hear again. She learns about favorite books, from leather-bound classics to _manga_ , which is _fucking delightful_. Moira learns in turn about hoverbikes crashed on salt flats, long walks through the outback home, of a tin trailer nestled beneath cliffs of red stone, a childhood spent near a Scrapyard and built in the shadow of an omnium.

"Your parents were members of the Australian Liberation Front?" Moira inquires as their entrees arrive at the table, ordered in a combination of the other woman's seemingly impeccable Italian and Jacqueline's own bastardized attempt based on Spanish. 

"My mother was," Jacqueline muses after a sip of wine, and for an instant, she can picture her mother in her mind - dark skin and flaxen hair, looking out over the outback with one hand around a rifle. "Paramilitary before that."

"And now?" Moira folds a napkin neatly in her lap, lifts a fork with clinical precision.

"She still consults sometimes, but mostly she just shoots at scavengers if they come near the house," Jack admits, a crooked smile touching her features as she thinks about it. "They live out near 'town, her and my dad. He's a solar engineer. He and my brothers just want to make hoverbikes that _go real fast_."

Mismatched eyes find her for the moment, and maybe it's the lighting or the wine, but something dangerous flits behind them, the hint of a smirk chasing after it as the taller woman observes, "Fast isn't always better."

Jacqueline snorts softly at that, a hint of mischief to her voice as she asks, "Anyone ever tell you you're a real tosser sometimes?" That earns her another laugh. She loves it, follows it with a question of her own, "What about your people?"

"My father passed away when I was quite young," Moira intones between precise bites of her meal. The taller woman's manners are impeccable. "My mother lives in Dublin, where she teaches art history at university. I have three brothers. Connor, Finn, and Angus, all older."

"And I suppose you're the only brilliant geneticist?" there's a teasing note to her voice, she's aware. This is more fun than she expected it to be, all said and done, not quite the roll in the lab she'd been anticipating when the other asked to meet. "Five here. All younger."

"Ah, so you are the bad example?" Moira inquires with amusement, though confides, "Correct. Connor owns a bar in Dublic, Finn is a heart surgeon, and Angus is an artist." With seemingly genuine curiosity, the taller woman asks, "What are their names?"

Jack counts them off on her fingers as she speaks, "Paora, Kamaka, Nikau, Timoti, and Tama. The last two are twins. They're all little bastards." Spearing a piece of mushroom with her fork, she confides, "A mechanic, two scrap-hunters, and the other three are in uni or gradeschool."

"I would have been Ngaire, if my mom hadn't lost a bet," she confides further, a mischief to her voice. She points the fork in the taller woman's direction next, "Also. I resent your accusation. Whatever gave you the impression that I was the bad one?"

"A very expensive silk tie," Moira answers back smoothly, a low sound of amusement chasing the words, "Which was irreparably wrinkled the other evening when you showed up at my laboratory unannounced and with questionable intentions."

"Bold words for someone who _pinned me to the door_ right after," Jacqueline retorts with snort of mirth, doubling down with a blithe, "Classic younger sibling behavior, O'Deorain. Trying to shift the blame. Zero accountability." She clicks her tongue once, eating a grape before teasing, "Besides, you're forgetting the cardinal rule of older siblings. I'm basically untouchable."

A low chuckle sounds at that, one of the taller woman's brows arching subtly as those heterochromatic eyes flick over her, and then warm fingertips brush lightly along the inside of her knee beneath the table and she can't help but jump, the silverware rattling on the table as her knee hits the bottom of it.

"What an interesting hypothesis," Moira all but drawls, looking like the cat that ate the canary now, a smirk curled over her features as mismatched eyes meet her own. Her hand hasn't moved. "I lament to inform you, _Jacqueline_ , that it was so easily proven faulty."

Dark eyes flick up toward that ocean-and-blood gaze, heat creeping to her cheekbones as she accuses amusedly, "You are the fucking devil."

There's another low chuckle, their meal concluded for the most part as Moira withdraws the hand and asks, "Tell me about omnium-synthesized titanium?"

The breeze off the canal is a little brisk, and she must have shivered, because an arm drapes around her shoulders, a pleasant warmth felt as she simply slips an arm around Moira's waist in turn, shifting slightly closer to boot up the small holoscreen on her comm again. 

"There's a variant of titanium that was only produced in omniums," Jacqueline starts to explain, pulling up schematics for the other's arm implant. "It has a higher conductivity ratio than normal titanium and would- should, if my calculations are correct..."

She highlights the specifics, waits until Moira has scanned over them to elaborate, "Maintain the lack of reactivity within the muscle and skin, but increase the conductivity. Meaning..."

"Increased sensation in the limb," Moira finishes easily, that taloned hand reaching out to tap the holoscreen, zoom in on some of the finer calculations at the bottom. "This is brilliant, Jacqueline. Where would you..." she pauses, finishes her own sentence as her eyebrows rise, "The Australian Omnium."

"The Australian Omnium," Jacqueline reiterates, an involuntary shudder running through her as she remembers how the skin wicked away from her hands. "You know I've been there before. If I'm quick, in and out, and I know what I'm looking for? It shouldn't be terrible. If I'm lucky enough to find a data cache or two, maybe I can learn more about _how _they synthesized it, and that would be a trick."__

__"You shouldn't go alone," comes the counter-point, and Jack nods her agreeance of the assessment._ _

__"I have a few contacts in 'town that I could pay or otherwise convince to accompany, Junkers will do almost anything for a shot at good scrap," she confides as a point. "Believe me, flash blindness was unenjoyable enough the first time. I'm not gunning for a second."_ _

__"There's always a chance that I could source the material directly from the locals," she adds on as an after-thought. "If you're interested in pulling the thread and seeing where it goes. I suppose I should have asked that first. Sometimes my brain just latches onto an idea and I can't really..."_ _

__Wrinkling her nose slightly, Jacqueline makes a gesture like releasing something, confessing, "If that makes sense."_ _

__There's a warm kiss near the corner of her jaw, and her eyelashes flutter, head turning toward the taller woman at the action._ _

__"Hi," is what she manages to say then._ _

__"Hello there," comes the response, a smirk curling the corner of the taller woman's lips before she leans back to wave toward a nearby waiter. "The check, please."_ _


	7. if you really wanna take me down, you need to try harder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Moira gets annoyed  
> Jack makes a friend  
> Dragging this out before I post like three chapters of awful

There's a distant murmur of conversation around them, people in all manner of costume and garb wandering the cobblestone streets, ducking in and out of shops and byways on their way here or there, home, or out, or to who knows where else for the evening. It's beautiful, and the company is decidedly pleasant as they walk along the canal-side beneath a wine-dark sky, the first silvered hint of the moon and stars glittering overhead, glistening where they reflect on the currents of the pitch black water below. 

Moira's arm is draped comfortably around her shoulders again, and she can't quite help but notice the low tension that bleeds into it when the communicator buzzes. Not hers. The pleasant conversation halts, and those angular features suddenly look _sharp enough to cut_ as it's lifted to the other's ear in a way that makes her certain Moira is considering _throwing the damn thing in the canal straightaway_.

"I'm out, Gabriel," the low, pleasant timbre of the evening has gone cool and brusque. "Yes, in Rialto. That should be obvious."

Her arm slid around the taller woman's waist, she feels the increase in tension to that tall frame, like a wire drawn too tight and in danger of snapping. As if it may help, she brushes slow, steady circles along the other's side with her fingertips. 

After a moment, Moira states slowly, punctuating every word firmly as if it were the end of the discussion, "You knew I would be absent. That is hardly a critical issue, and I have plans that I will not be postponing a second time."

A long pause stretches on for seeming ages before mismatched eyes glance at a watch, a concession made, "Gabriel." Another pause, in which the taller woman exhales slowly through her nose, " _Gabriel_. I can provide you with twenty minutes. At a maximum." Then with incredulous sharpness, "No, it's not _a negotiable time frame_."

When the communicator chirps back off, Moira's jaw is tense, a sharp line that looks fit to cut. There's a momentary exhale before the taller woman looks back in her direction as if to explain, but Jack simply takes that angular jaw into her hands and draws her into a slow, warm kiss that lingers on the canal-side for *far longer* than it should. Her dark eyes rove those freckled features when the other draws back, and at a questioning look, she confides, "I won't forget you in twenty minutes."

Then, a twitch to the corner of her lips as she flicks a look down and then back up the taller woman, "I mean, probably."

There's a soft scoff from Moira at that, one that transitions into a chuckle at the end, and the other steers her down the street and asserts, "You're a chancer."

The architecture is old, but it all seems to be here. It's a façade of rising stone arches, marble columns strung with dark banners of charcoal-grey and a deep, almost wine-coloured purple. The lobby is enormous, chic but dramatic, with black marble floors shot through with silver and aubergine walls lined with oil paintings. 

"Twenty minutes," Moira reiterates as if for her benefit, a pointed look swept over her before that impossibly tall form cuts off in the direction of the receptionist desk, then towards an elevator to disappear into the upper floors. 

She spends her time inspecting the paintings at first, their subjects seeming universally dark, but no less beautiful for it. Battle. The fall of angels. A war in the heavens. The silence has stretched into almost twenty minutes when she hears her communicator chime softly, pulls it out to see that the twins are sending her pictures of brumbies in real time. She chats idly with them for another ten, occasionally looking toward the elevators as the time ticks on. 

It's been at least forty minutes when she hears a commotion in the hallway, a resounding crash followed by ringing metal, and perhaps its habit, the years of dealing with her little brothers, or perhaps it's the boredom, but she steps toward it to see...arguably the broadest-shouldered man she has ever seen in her entire life looking down at the scattered pieces of what looks to be some sort of coffee maker. 

"You alright, mate?" Jack asks as she steps down the hall to help him collect the pieces. Nothing seems broken at least. 

"If I could get this thing to work I would be superb," comes a rich, low response in a distinctly West African accent. He is broad-shouldered and impossibly tall, dressed in a dark shirt and a white suit jacket that accents his dark skin pleasantly. 

"They usually work better if you don't pitch them on the floor, you know," she retorts with a wink, the hint of a smile curling over her features.

He chuckles, and she thinks it sounds like blood and thunder in the distance, then tips his head toward the nearby office and she follows him into it, taking the time to message Moira where she is, not that it seems likely the other will be returning soon. It takes only a few minutes to set out the parts on the counter, and without much to do, she pulls up schematics on her communicator based on the serial number and starts to sort out the inner workings.

"Expresso, cappuccino, and coffee," Jacqueline whistles lowly as she starts to assemble it. "That's posh." Then, with amusement, "Jack, by the way."

"Jack," he confirms politely, though a current of amusement seems to strike his deep voice as he holds out a hand to take hers. It all but engulfs hers, but she shakes it the best she can anyways. He provides the name, "Akande." He scans her features briefly, "I suspect you are awaiting Moira, aren't you?"

"Longest twenty minutes of my life," Jack quips, flashing an amused look at him. Unzipping an inner panel in her jacket, she selects a tool that will fit and starts to inset screws. 

"Australian?" he ventures as he leans a hip into the counter, watching her work with a mild interest.

"Guilty," she responds easily, fastening another section of the machine together with a slight 'snap'. 

"Melbourne?" he asks then, as if attempting to place it on accent alone. "Perth?"

Jack's brows lift slightly, and she confides with a cheeky grin, "Junkertown. Don't worry, though. I left all my ordinance and bad manners in my other jacket."

He chuckles again as he watches her work, and there's something oddly calming about his presence. Maybe it's that he looks like he could bend a steel beam in half with his bare hands. He confesses, "This is further than I accomplished already."

"If I can patch a mecha, I can fix an expresso...slash cappuccino...slash coffee machine," Jack responds, withdrawing the tool to flip through the next three steps on the console in rapid succession. "Besides, could use something to do at the moment. Maybe I should fix all your damn clocks after."

He chuckles again at that, then ventures with a more shrewd look in his eyes, "Are you a mecha pilot, then?"

"Sometimes. Mechanic is probably more accurate, though," Jack answers conversationally, feeling her communicator chime again and rolling her eyes when it isn't Moira. At Akande's expression, she flips the screen open to show him a picture of an absolutely dreadful-looking pony. "My little brothers are trying to con me into buying them a brumby. Outback horse."

She sets the comm down beside the coffee machine on the counter, adding as a matter of course, "I used to do some rounds in the Scrapyard with my mech, but it's a modded scout mecha, so it's not meant for heavy hitting. Not like say...the Korean mechas. No rockets sor anything. I did add a railgun."

"Ah, yes. Because nothing says _subtle_ like a _railgun_ ," he muses in that smooth, deep voice. It sounds like echoing in a reservoir.

"That's a lot of sass for someone who's letting a Junker build their coffee machine," Jack counters amusedly, the corner of her lips curling a bit further. "It's a hit and run mecha. Some limited phase technology. Keeps the railgun surprising. Really, though, fighting mechas is like Junker football. Not as interesting as it sounds."

"Limited phase technology sounds interesting enough," he responds lowly, another chuckle sounding from him as he hands her the next piece.

"You say that," she starts, using the heel of her hand to slam the side of the expresso machine into place until it sticks and thankful that doesn't dent the finish. "But our current Scrapyard champion is a genetically engineered space hamster who rolls around in an orbital mech, cables onto supports to swing around, and confettis hover-mines."

"Wrecking Ball," Akande observes with a twitch to the corner of his lips.

"You follow Junker mechs?" Jack inquires suddenly, surprise evident in her voice as she looks up. Popping a screw between her lips to hold it, she pivots the machine at that, then takes the attachment and fastens it. 

"No, but I am familiar with that one," he answers with a snort. "Do you still fight?"

"Sometimes I'll run drills with them when I'm on leave," Jack replies, making a few adjustments before powering down the holoscreen. She leans across the counter to plug the machine in, then removes the interior well to fill it with water from the nearby sink. "But it hasn't been frequent. They keep me chained to my workstation in Oasis R&D most of the time."

"What about you?" she asks, fitting the well back into the machine and then asking, "Do you fight?" Then, "What are we making here?"

Knuckles actually bump her jaw lightly, a friendly enough gesture, and she snorts with amusement before he answers, "Mixed martial arts. And expresso, I think. You look like you could use one." Nodding toward another box, he confides with the hint of a chuckle, "Once you are finished with this, there's a milk frother as well."

"Cheeky," Jack accuses, though her hands find the filter and packaging for the machine, filling it with a fine, strong-smelling powder before clicking it back into place and hearing the gurgle of hot water as it starts to brew. It doesn't taker her all that long to find the other appliance thereafter, and she informs her newfound friend as she reads the packaging, "You know I'm gone as soon as she gets back down here, right mate?"

There's the chirp of a communicator - not hers - and when she looks up, Akande has an impossibly wide grin as he remarks into it, voice immeasurably more serious than his expression, "Reyes. Keep Doctor O'Deorain occupied for another fifteen minutes, if you would."

Jack blinks slowly, but her eyes soon narrow as she looks from him toward the expresso machine.

"Do not," he chuckles when her gaze locks there. There's a teasing note to his voice as he confides, "She will be down soon, you have my word."

She clicks on her communicator, directing its assistance program, "Aro. Add Akande to my shit list."

"Akande added to list _my shit list_ ," a tinny voice response from the comm.

Unboxing the milk frother and setting out the pieces, of which there aren't many, she advises Akande next, "If I don't see her in the next ten minutes, I'm going upstairs and telling *Reyes* to get bent. And then her and I and your coffee maker are going on a walk over to the canal."

Akande merely chuckles as he moves to get a pair of small cups for expresso. It thankfully doesn't take her long to piece the secondary appliance together and plug it in. 

"You're an angel," Akande claims, and they set about pouring expresso into small cups, adding a little frothed milk and - weirdly - cinnamon, as they chat for a time. At least until there's the sound of a throat clearing near the door, a familiar, angular creature silhouetted there who looks decidedly *displeased* at that moment. 

Jack looks from her second small porcelain cup to Akande, taps the rim to his, and then tips it back entirely before simply sliding the saucer onto the counter and hopping down from it. Her jacket retrieved and slid on, she steps over toward the taller woman - entirely missing the way Akande mouths 'She's charming' at Moira over her shoulder - and sees a sudden sharpness return to the taller woman's features momentarily.

"Enjoy your expresso," Jack calls over her shoulder as Moira steers her toward the door, a little wave offered before she looks up toward the taller woman and confides softly, if with vague amusement, "Your friend's an asshole"


	8. go ahead and pull it, bang bang, down on my knees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the shitshow.  
> NSFW  
> Using game voice lines for dubious purposes.

When she's taken back to Moira's apartment, they both have an inkling of what the night has in store, if not the specifics of how it will arrive there. It was written in the night bag she was asked to bring, in the lingering looks they have shared throughout the evening, and now in the relative solace of a balcony apartment overlooking the canals, the gondolas drifting slowly along the dark water, their lanterns casting a warm glow over the dark, glassy currents. 

It's brisk, but she's relatively warm, and it may be the hour or the whiskey, but they've settled into a languid sort of conversation that flows back and forth with the promise of something more, the tension in Moira's frame unwinding slowly with the hour. It's hard to concentrate on anything but the low murmur of Moira's voice, she finds, despite the night view of Venice.

There's less hurry now, only the slow wind-down of what has been altogether an unexpected evening. Moira had drawn the leather, wing-backed chair out onto the balcony, drawn her down into it with her, and it's surprisingly...just nice. It smells faintly of smoke, and as her nails trace idly on the back of the taller woman's neck, she listens to the sound of music in the distance, the rolling cadence of the voice near her ear.

"Jacqueline," there's a shift in the taller woman says her name, a little lower, a little huskier as it stirs her hair.

"Mm?" she asks, dark eyes roving over subtly freckled features in the dim illumination. The soft glow of the lanterns below casts them in sharp relief, bold angles, and it's breathtaking. Shadows and light cast over mismatched eyes as Moira catches her lightly by the chin, brushing lips to hers only briefly. 

"There is a guest room, if you would like it," the implication behind the words goes unsaid, a subtle stress on the word _if_. A question that isn't so much asked as it's offered like an olive branch. 

"And if I wouldn't?" she answers in the spirit of how it was asked, holding the other's gaze, aware that her voice is smoother than she thought it would be in that moment.

Moira slips the glass from her hand after a second, sliding it onto the nearby railing, and there's a shift in their conversation, in that it ends in a soft, "That would be grand," against the side of her neck. A sharp pain follows after it, the edge of what she recognizes as teeth, followed by a pleasant, lingering warmth as a kiss comes after. A chuckle reverberates near her jaw when she inhales sharply.

Her hand starts to lift toward the place on her throat Moira just was, but the other curls long fingers around her wrist and halts the trajectory. When teeth rasp in the same place, harder this time, it elicits a wholly indecent sound from the back of Jacqueline's throat. _Shit. Shit fuck damn._ She shivers slightly when a touch ghosts over the bare skin of her shoulders, a cold hand slipping the jacket from around them, allowing it to drop to the ground beside the chair. 

There's a kiss to the juncture of her shoulder and neck, another beneath her jaw, and she knows without a doubt that Moira is completely in control of the situation. Taking her time. Her touch is light when she removes Jack's earrings, then slips the heavy ring from her knuckle, sliding these onto the nearby table. Control. It whispers in between the breaths. She loves it.

" _God_ ," Jack exhales in a shuddering voice at the warm breath that gusts beneath her jaw, her eyes dark as she realizes that Moira has said...something to her, but lost as to what it was. "I'm sorry, _what was that_?"

"Where did you procure the ring?" is what Moira murmurs against the column of her neck, almost conversationally, and she can hear her breathing, feel it, maddeningly warm against her damp skin and the pulse hammering underneath.

"That's one I-" there's a hum near her ear then, an almost wanton pressure of teeth and wet warmth beneath the curve of her jaw as the other bites, then suckles the skin and the answer comes out instead as a low, " _Fuck_ , Moira," as her nails bite into the back of the other's neck.

Her fingers tangle in a crown of red hair and force Moira's head back for a reprieve, and the look on those angular features is so much the cat that ate the canary, insufferably smug. Pleased. Bix isn't wrong, she realizes as sharp nails trail along her thigh. Whatever flits behind those ocean-and-blood eyes in the dark _wants to pick her apart_ , it's just in the _best possible way_.

She takes advantage of where they are, turning to rest her knees alongside those slim hips and lean up, over Moira for the moment so that she's looking down at those freckle-dusted features in the Venice light. Her hair falls like a dark veil around them, a curtain against the distant glow of the lanterns on the canals below, and when she brings them together again, it's languid and deep, a matter of time before her lower lip is grazed by teeth. 

When they part, just enough to breathe, her lips are tingling and Moira's are freshly smudged with cherry red. Her words brush the corner of the taller woman's mouth as she whispers, unable, or perhaps unwilling to fully break the contact, "I took it from a Junker named Dingo after I wholesale _beat his ass_ in the Scrapyard."

Her nails scrape lightly along Moira's scalp, and a low noise is uttered against her skin with the action. Not relinquishing her grasp on the other woman's hair, nor her leverage, she brushes her lips feather-light over their own, only to draw back each time the other shifts forward, playing a game that she _knows_ is dangerous. Denial. She whispers boldly, stroking the defined line of the other's jaw, "I bet I could take you, O'Deorain."

Another kiss to the taller woman's cheek, red lipstick garish where it smudges the skin, as she leans forward to brush her lips to the shell of Moira's ear, a hand still tangled in that red hair as she breathes warmly, "You should let me. Down on my knees. _Just like church_."

She waits for something lean and dangerous to relinquish its power into her hands, feels the tension in the lean musculature beneath her hand, the breath that gusts in her hair, the hard rise and fall of the chest pressed to hers. Moira's eyes are blown-black, impossibly dark, and her freckles stand out prominently in the shadows and the dim coruscation of golden light. There's a bare nod, only just perceptible, before that tall frame relaxes beneath her hand.

Humming against the pulse point of the taller woman's throat, she brushes a kiss there, hand releasing its hold in Moira's hair to trail down the column of the neck, tracing the pronounced line of a collarbone and then ghost down the sternum. She wants that jacket _off_ , but takes her time, the buttons released one at a time with phantom touches to the skin beneath. 

Another ghost of a kiss to the curve of Moira's lips, and when the other pushes forward again, she pulls back and lets the other chase her, chuckling into her mouth when the hand on her waist wraps in the front of her dress to pull her back forward. Whiskey and mint. When they part, that voice speaks, smoke and whiskey, husky with the low current of a promise, "Tabharfaidh mé as do chéile."

Her hands slide under the linen when the last button is freed, and Moira's skin is warm, so fucking warm under her palms. She strokes her thumbs there, murmuring against the other's jaw in a response to words whose meaning is heard more in tone than any true linguistic comprehension, "Junkers don't tap, doll."

"There's an interesting hypothesis," there's a low, rolling music to the words; they almost sound calculating. In the dim illumination, cast between shadow and gold, those freckled features are eerily sharp, otherworldly, undeniably wanting. When she pushes the jacket over those lean shoulders, drops it onto the floor of the balcony, Moira sinks back into the chair with a slow indolence, as if it were a throne she was always meant to rule from. 

She takes it slow. Excruciatingly slow to start, trailing a warm path along the column of Moira's neck with lips and tongue and teeth, smudging the pale skin there with hints of crimson wherever she touches, watching as a hint of soft pink bleeds through in her wake. It dapples over that milky complexion like watercolour, touching the throat and the chest, and when she feels the long fingers of one hand wind into her hair to secure a grasp there, it's intoxicating in its own way. When she shifts lower, mouth mapping the valley between the breasts, that hold tightens subtly, and she can almost feel the taller woman attempting _not_ to assert control, to let this happen as it will.

Inhaling citrus and burnt amber, she feels a low sound in Moira's chest, and discovers that there are freckles there too. There's a part of her that in that moment wants to map them out like constellations, see where they start and end. She hopes there will be time for that, and the idea hardens in her mind. She'll make sure there's time for that. Later.

Shrugging out of her own jacket, she feels gooseflesh break out on her shoulders at the temperature shift, but sinks back - placing it between her knees and the cold marble as she settles between Moira's impossibly long legs. She's looking up at Moira now, and the other looks wild, dangerous, beautiful, like some ancient god come down to earth to be worshipped. She's happy to oblige. Her touch is gentle as she slips off the other's shoes, then socks, adding them to the pile already made from a white linen jacket. A belt slowly unbuckled, pulled free with a soft hiss of leather through the loops, and Moira's eyes are impossibly dark, that freckle-smattered chest breathing harder than it had been before and tinged in pink nearly to the navel.

Good. She places a kiss beneath it while she undoes the buttons, murmuring there, "Lift your hips," and waiting for the taller woman to comply so that she can slide long, white linen trousers from them to pool on the marble beside her. 

There are boxer briefs beneath, a dark purple picked at with black seams, and its a pleasant contrast to the pale, milky skin everywhere else. She leaves them for now, but slides her hands along the sides of lean thighs, feeling the warm skin beneath her touch, the tension in the muscle beneath. Another kiss above the waistband, making coppery lashes flutter above her. She teases sensation from it, hears a soft sound escape her companion at the touch, and draws it out longer, longer still, feather-light on the inside of the knee, the slope of a thigh, lingering wherever there's a reaction. Tactile mapping of all the places she's wanted to visit.

Her hand finds Moira's own after a time, eases its clenched grip on the arm of the chair and guides it into her hair, to tangle there, the one hand warm and the other cold in those dark tresses now. Holds her gaze as she slips her hands up once more, the fingertips curling in the waistband of boxer briefs to draw them slowly down. 

"You're _fucking gorgeous_ ," Jack breathes in the dim light, and means every word of it. There's a shuddering intake of breath above her, followed by a husky groan when she slides her fingers exactly where she knows they're wanted and slowly strokes there, the movement drawn out as she presses another kiss beneath the taller woman's navel. Careful to use her middle and index fingers in lieu of those with sharper nails, she trails a slow path until she hears the breath hitch, then ducks her head to press her mouth there instead. 

She moves slowly and purposefully, teasing out what the other enjoys and what she does not, and before long, Moira has tightened hold of her hair and is rolling hips slowly against her mouth, Jack's fingers moving all the while. Her other palm has come to rest on the inside of Moira's thigh, and she can feel the tremors there, the low reverberations of sound the other makes vibrating through muscle and bone. It's maddening. Wonderful. _She fucking loves Venice._ And when Moira's breath stutters, shudders above her, the sounds she makes louder now, Jack shifts her hand from a long thigh to splay flat over the other's abdomen, holding her back against the chair. Her mouth moves just so, and as she suckles in just the right place, she crooks her fingers hard, sliding them to the knuckle as the taller woman comes undone with an almost guttural sound. 

Jack presses a warm kiss there, gentler this time, the stroking motion of her fingers slowing as she guides the other through the aftershocks, then turns her head to place another kiss to the inside of a freckled thigh and withdraws her slick fingers to provide some relief. She shifts to keep her legs under her, chin comfortably leaned to Moira's thigh, and waits for the other to come back into herself. After a time, one taloned hand withdraws, though the other remains in her hair, gently stroking through it as they sit in silence.

It slips lower after a time, cupping her jaw, and when she smirks a thumb presses lightly to her lower lip and she knows she must look a glorious mess, all mussed hair, dark glittering eyes, and smudged lipstick. When Moira's ocean-and-blood eyes lower to hers, the sliver of moonlight behind the taller woman crowns her in fire and silver, and there's a sense of satisfaction in a low, rolling voice as it breathes, "The state of you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tabharfaidh mé as do chéile - I will tear you apart  
> Google translate so questionable translation


	9. chalkin out my silhouette on these black sheets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clearly back on my bullshit  
> They're lesbians, Harold.

Moira's bedroom is dark timber and cream walls, a pleasant contrast to a pleasant space that looks, altogether, barely lived in but still carries telltale signs of being passed through. A leather-bound book on the nightstand, a silk tie on the vanity, a small dish in which a pair of silver cufflinks rest, one set with a blue stone and the other red. It seems a space more _designed_ than _occupied_ , but it carries the scent of bergamot and burnt amber all the same.

A lanky silhouette before her, Moira seems once more impossibly tall, the silver moonlight casting her features in sharp relief and dark shadows, unsettling intense and ethereal where it dapples over subtly freckled skin. She watches with a vague fascination as a cool fingertip traces the curvature of a long, slim scar around her bicep, tracking where it wraps around the limb as the other woman arches a brow at her.

"Solar wire," she answers softly, dark eyes following the touch, losing track of the taller woman as they step behind her. There's a light kiss to its terminus on the back of her shoulder, and the subtle tension in the fabric at her nape as the fastening on her dress is undone with precision, the gilded material falling to the floor in a pool of seemingly liquid gold at her feet. 

It's strangely intimate, the scrutiny, the play of fingertips along the back of her shoulder where a dot-worked ink details a constellation in minimalist fashion. "Hydra," she iterates, head atilt as if it would allow her to see the taller form behind her. "Cut off one head, two take its place."

That touch circles in a way that reminds her, somewhere in the back of her mind, like a bird of prey overhead or perhaps a lion watching a gazelle from amidst the golden grass. It's not uncomfortable. It should be. It's always gentle, even where it brushes over a history of violence, the small imperfections along her ribcage where a Junker grenade showered scrap and hot metal. She explains each away, the words coming easily in the near-dark. 

The nick in her upper lip, remnant of a fist-fight with another Junker, receives a light kiss that makes her eyelids flutter. So does the tattoo over her sternum, branching beneath the collarbones, its two black hares in mid-leap around a stylized sun at the center - rays a halo of black lines at the apex and the crescent of a moon eclipsing the other half. 

An involuntary shudder courses through her when that touch finds the smooth, circular scar on the inside of her wrist, stilling there when she confides, "Radiation burn."

"Ah. From the Omnium," comes the statement, low in that husky voice; Moira lifts her hand, a light kiss placed there, lips brushing over the skin and her pulse thrumming in time beneath.

"From the Omnium," Jacqueline replies softly, feeling exposed and a little vulnerable at the action.

It must show in her expression, because Moira cradles her jaw of a sudden, those mismatched eyes searching hers, half-lid with desire as the taller woman whispers, "It's beautiful." And then, a kiss to her lips, surprisingly tender, and another to her cheek before the other whispers in her ear as if it were a much higher compliment than the first, "You're _fascinating_."

It's not what she expected, none of this is, but there's comfort in it, in the way that she's guided back onto soft sheets and Moira settles with her, over her. A warm pressure that she has to fight the urge to instinctively arch up into when they come to rest, her knee hooked over a slim hip, Moira leaning up on elbows. Skin on skin. She can hear the breath shudder in her chest when the bridge of a freckled nose brushes to hers, and it's already almost too much.

Jack lifts her chin a scant measure, a bare nod that almost brings their lips together, but not quite, and her eyes close when teeth scrape beneath her jaw a moment later, eliciting a dull ache in the bruise already adorning the coppery skin. 

"I'll be gentle if you ask me to," comes a soft promise there, lips brushing with every word. 

"It's alright," she whispers back, and means it.

When teeth find her skin a second time, it isn't gentle; it's hard enough to drive the air from her lungs in a shocked, guttural sound as her toes curl in the sheets, body arching up even as Moira presses in, a thigh between her legs to hold her down, offsetting the ache at her throat with a _wholly different_ one elsewhere.

She's certain that there's blood pooling under the skin, as certainly as she knows that her nails broke the skin on Moira's shoulders, clawed up on her back when the process repeats itself with excruciating slowness. So it goes. And everywhere that wicked mouth lands, she's never sure which will be a warm kiss and which will be chased by the devil's teeth, one of her hands curled tightly in the other's fiery hair and the other tense against the back of a lean, freckled shoulder, leaving welts behind when she can't do anything else.

It's punishing and beautiful, and when those firm, impossibly skilled fingers slide between them and tease her, stroking gently, with only enough pressure to leave her wanting for more, she has no idea what to do. There's no control. It's all been relinquished, and when her head tilts back with a breathy sound, she feels the savage pressure of teeth at her collarbone even as those fingers glide slickly, pushing up into her in a slow motion.

" _Fuck_ , Moira," she manages in a breathy moan, biting her lip when those fingers find a slow, infuriatingly teasing rhythm, never still for long before they slip out entirely, tracing a teasing circle before they push back in with excruciating slowness. She can taste copper. " _Fucking hell_."

Those fingers find leverage, backed by a thigh, and when Moira's hips rock against hers, hard, they don't tease anymore and she doesn't know which was more maddening. Her shoulders and neck are on fire, dappled with blue-black crescents that she _knows_ will linger on long past the morning sun. She doesn't care. It's all she can do to hold a coherent thought as the headboard hits the wall, and she's wholly given up on being quiet now, feels the sounds leave her throat, wild and unrestrained, just as she feels the reactions that chase them as Moira pulls all hell out of her in the dark. 

There's a tension building, winding her like a spool of wire until its so taut that she knows she's about to snap, fray around the edges, holding onto the lanky frame above her like it's salvation. It is. And with the sound of, " _Géill do mo thoil_ ," husky in her ear like it's _permission_ , those long fingers thrust deeper still and curl in just the right way, and it drags her under with the taller woman's name like a prayer on her lips.

The writing's on the wall after that, and while there are moments of respite, they never last as long as they probably should. Commands and requests for permission, the firm pressure of a body weighing her down, pressing her into the soft mattress. She reaches up to touch an angular jaw, ghost her fingertips along the curve of Moira's lips, and almost loses her mind when the taller woman takes one into her mouth.

There are slender hands that shift at her hips, and on at least one occasion that night, a cold hand that wraps gently but firmly around her throat to apply pressure. There are her own hands, tense, the nails biting into the taller woman's freckled back and feeling the tension of the muscles under their palms every time those slim hips or slender hands or a mouth find a rhythm and hold to it. 

Moira is right about rough. But god is it good. She learns all the places that make the other inhale sharply, tastes salt and cologne, whiskey and mint on her lips, maps a lean, tall body with her mouth, her hands in a way that makes her certain she could draw it from memory later, if she wanted to. She learns that when Moira is close, she can hear words in a husky, melodic language that she can't understand, murmured fervently and frequently. She learns a whole realm of ways in which her name can be said. 

The third time that Moira fucks her against the headboard, she buries her head in the crook of the other's neck and clinging to those lean shoulders where she can. She comes apart too hard and can't breathe, the air stuttering in her lungs and driving a wild, animal cry from them that sounds garish against the low, husked words in her ear. 

It's too much. Too much of everything, her muscles still tense and sore, her limbs locked around Moira like she's drowning and the taller woman is the only thing that will keep her afloat, clinging to her shoulders like a lifeline. Her nerves feel like they're on fire everywhere, and when she feels a shift above her, her fingertips tense against those freckled shoulders and she hears her breath shudder against Moira's skin as she intones desperately, "Stop, Moira. Stop. Stop," as if the other may not have heard her initially.

"I can't," follows in her voice, and she's aware that she's pressed a hand between them on the taller woman's chest. Her words cut off in a strangled sound as the other slowly draws out of her as if not to make it worse, and she feels her toes curl and back arch regardless, breath still coming hard and shudderingly fast. _Am I trembling?_ Jack wonders, realizing as she tries to catch her breath that she is. Uncontrollably. Hard.

She sucks in a breath when Moira shifts to settle at her side, and there's a pleasant warmth against her, long arms curving around her to draw her against the comfortable pressure of that lanky build. Gentle again. God, she isn't good with gentle. Her cheek nestled to the other's chest, smelling bergamot, burnt amber, and sex, Jack is suddenly aware that _she's fucking crying_ , a tear trailing a wet trail down her cheek as Moira's head comes to tuck over hers, a husky whisper gentle in her ear, "Shh. I have you, rabbit."

Slowly, ever so slowly, the tension in her slim frame starts to ease, melt away beneath feather-light touches, the tracery of cool fingertips stroking her skin trading the fire in her nerves for a dull ache and then a pleasant weariness. When her breathing finally steadies, she relaxes into that touch, eyes slipping closed for a time as she simply listens to the rise and fall of the taller woman's chest beneath her cheek.

"I guess Junkers do tap," she murmurs pleasantly against the other's skin. Her cadence doesn't shift as she adds as if a sincere after-thought, "If you tell anyone I cried, I'll fucking kill you."

Moira's chuckle thrums beneath her cheek, fingertips light as they stroke through her hair. There's a kiss pressed to her temple by way of response. Something about it warms her fingertips. Those mismatched eyes are half-lid, while fingertips trace gently over her tattoo and then the other's handiwork, a smattering of bruises splayed over coppery skin.

After a time, that tall, angular frame shifts to lever up from bed, and she almost protests the absence, save for how the other woman bends to press a quick, light kiss to her lips. 

The sound of running water can be heard soon after, a shower hissing on, and she's dozing when the taller woman returns with damp hair, smelling of citrusy soap and steering her toward the shower in her stead. There are languid questions between them in the warm, mist-chased air, and then Moira disappears for a time. 

When Jack steps out of the water, glancing at her reflection in the foggy mirror as she towels her hair, she can see the dark mottling of bruises - purple-black already at the curve of her throat and lean shoulder, the most prominent a clear impression of teeth beneath her jaw. Scattered marks dapple the copper of her skin elsewhere. 

Grapefruit, she thinks, as the citrusy scent of the shampoo hits her, maybe a little mint. It smells good. There's a soft black t-shirt and boy shorts folded next to the sink, clothes from her to-go bag laid out for her, and they are undeniably comfortable when she pulls them on. There is a dark bruise visible beneath the hem, on the inside of one thigh, and looking at it, she can see where blood has pooled beneath the skin in the vague outline of teeth. 

As she steps back into the bedroom, the timber is cool beneath her feet, the windows open and the night breeze stirring in the curtains as Moira puts new pillowcases on the bed, the sheets stripped in favor of another set of white cotton, and a heavy duvet pulled out to toss atop it. Dressed in boxer briefs and a white shirt, she can see where the other's shoulders are dappled with damp from having been in the shower, and she steps up behind Moira to place a kiss between those shoulders, hearing a pleased sound for her actions. Any concerns she had evaporate when she's steered over to sit on the edge of the bed, and with deft, careful fingers, the taller woman smooths a cold medigel over her bruised skin here and there.

Moira looks surprised, but doesn't protest, when she takes the tube and gently, but firmly, turns the taller woman around. Pulling up the other's shirt to reveal the subtly freckled contours of her back, Jack can see where her nails bit into the skin, raked over it to leave red lines in their wake. She feels an involuntary flinch beneath her touch as she gently dabs gel over the scratches she can see there, and draws the shirt back down when she's finished, the tube set on the bedside stand. 

There's not a question. The time for that is long past. Moira simply turns back the blankets and slips into bed, making room for Jack beside her. She's surprised at how comfortable this is, how strange it feels to nestle back into that bed, the pleasant weight of Moira's arms draped around her as they settle back as they were before - Moira's head tucked over hers, her cheek nestled to the soft fabric over the other's chest. 

_She fucking loves Venice._


	10. we light the match and we run like hell

She's aware that the dawn has come, the first pale streaks of gold filtering through the curtains to dapple over the blankets, bare skin, soft cotton. It doesn't take long to place that this isn't her room in the apartment she shares in downtown Oasis. No. Rialto. It comes slowly, the previous evening slipping back with the scent of bergamot, burnt amber, and smoke, with the way her limbs are tangled languidly in soft white sheets and there's a pleasant warmth nestled against her back, the soft rise and fall of someone's chest against her shoulders, their exhalations stirring in her hair.

Moira. The arm draped around her is tinged lavender, coiled about with threads of metal, cold to the touch where it brushes her own. It draws her back closer to that lanky frame when the other realizes she's awake, a sleep-rough voice murmuring near her ear, "Good morning, rabbit."

And isn't it a dangerous way to wake up, she thinks as she turns in those arms to face Moira. Her hair is mussed from sleep, eyes half-lid to reveal only a sliver of sapphirine and scarlet, the taller woman looking surprisingly peaceful, calm, as if the control so often evidenced on her angular features has melted away into a quiet contentedness. When her hand comes to rest along the line of the other's jaw, and she strokes a thumb up and over the curve of a cheekbone, she watches with nothing less than a quiet satisfaction as those eyes slip closed.

It's dangerous in that she likes it more than she should. That it's gentle, comfortable already in a way that she never achieved , she thinks, sliding her fingertips into mussed red hair and watching it slip between them. The sound that escapes Moira at the action is low and content, and when a freckled cheek comes to rest to her chest, she simply cradles it there, threading through fiery strands in the early dawn. 

"This is nice," she whispers as she draws her nails lightly over the back of Moira's neck, then strokes back through her hair. She can hear a low chuckle, a murmur in a language she doesn't understand but that falls easily from those lips.

"All evidence supports your claim," comes a decipherable response against her collarbone thereafter, Moira's voice still rough from sleep. She feels a brief tension as that tall frame stretches, then relaxes once more, exhaling in a quiet breath over her skin. 

Jack emits a soft sound in response, tracing an idle pattern over the other's scalp as they rest in silence for a time. The corner of her lips twitches slightly, and she inquires softly, "So what's it like being a brilliant geneticist?"

As if to undercut the way that tall frame is, relaxed and languid, warm where it touches hers, how that cool arm draws her even a little nearer to brush light fingertips to her lower back, Moira answers with a dry amusement, "At the moment? Bearable."

"You're a fucking tosser," the words fall easily from Jack's lips, though laced with a quiet laughter.

There's a pause then, a brief stretch of time in which she could almost swear she feels a smirk against her collarbone and feel the little tremors of a chuckle in those lean shoulders. She traces the freckles upon them with a fingertip, one to the next, as if they may hold a secret, hold a pattern that may reveal some mystery the universe.

Moira's voice is a lilting drawl, low and dangerously smooth, "What is it like being a Junker, Jacqueline? If you are not adequately comfortable, I could adjust the temperature and play a nice vid of dingos screaming."

"Terrible," Jack murmurs back near Moira's ear, a shiver following when a kiss is teased to the bruised skin beneath her jaw. Tracing the shell of the other's ear with warm fingertips, she advises, "Junkertown is a perfectly _respectable_ nation. We don't even _have_ that many dingos."

"Ah. My mistake," it isn't. Moira knows exactly what she's doing and the voice that murmurs against the curve of Jack's throat is _insufferably smug_ , "Just a gladiatorial arena, a rudimentary feudal system, radiation and what...all of four laws, is it? The so-called Queen's Decree."

"Five. There are five...and they're more like guidelines," Jack retorts easily, her voice smooth and laced with mirth. She inhales sharply then, at the feeling of teeth beneath her jaw, though the pressure is light this time. Little more than a nip. It has the desired effect, she suspects, a pleased sound nonetheless escaping her when a warm kiss is placed there thereafter. Fingertips hook in the hem of her shirt to draw it over her head, and she confides as her own tangle in a crown of red hair, "You're a right shit in the morning."

"I suspect, _Jacqueline_." God. She hates and loves how the taller woman says her name. It's punctuated by pressing her back down into the soft sheets, and if Moira didn't have her attention before, _she definitely has it now_. A lavender-tinged hand finds her own, Moira's slender fingers cold as they curve around her wrists and draw her touch back from the other's hair, instead held to the mattress. "That I could provide adequate incentive to get over it."

God, does she.


	11. raise a glass and paint our flag

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 110% certain that Jack experiences gay panic every time Moira has a wardrobe change

The first things that Jack notices as she steps out onto the balcony are the smell of freshly-brewed coffee in the cool air, the distant thrum of Rialto below, moving in the mid-morning sun. How _fucking impeccable_ Moira O'Deorain looks in that chair, the one she can't look at without recollecting exactly what happened on the balcony the previous evening. 

She has no idea how the other woman always looks so perfectly put together. It's impossible. It denies all reason. But there she is, smart and sharp in a maroon button-up shirt that has been rolled to the elbows at either sleeve and fastened there with a glimmeringly gold shirt pin to affix them there. The collar pins are similarly gold, shaped in the image of death's-head moths with a delicate chain between them. The trousers are pristinely white, clean and neatly-pressed, and Jack could honestly scream when Moira looks up, her red hair catching the light about the ends like a corona of fire and gold.

"How the fuck do you even exist?" she breathes with a pointed look over the other, aware that the smooth quality of her voice is frayed at the edges from sleep, and perhaps the activities of the morning. Her eyes catch the light to warm slightly in colour, and Moira clears her throat softly, what Jack could swear is a tinge of soft pink rising to those freckled cheekbones for a moment. She crosses over to drop down into the chair with the taller woman, a leg propped comfortably over the other's knee as she takes the warm ceramic mug from Moira's hands and takes a sip.

Her attire is much simpler. Force of habit from working in a machine shop, not that she thinks she would have the patience to dress as sharply as the other in her day to day. Dark hair swept over her shoulder in a loose braid, mostly to keep it from touching the still-stinging bruise on the _other_ side of her neck - that she's fairly certain she can see the outline of specific teeth in courtesy of her host -, Jack smells faintly of grapefruit and mint, damp from the shower in a heather-gray t-shirt and sun-faded jeans that have seen better days.

There's the sound of a throat clearing loudly then, and she can feel now how the lean form beneath her, beside her, has stiffened up almost instinctively as soon as she dropped down beside it. She jumps sharply at spotting Akande across from them at the table, feeling the coffee go down the wrong pipe almost immediately. Having to lean over the side of the chair to make sure she doesn't cough any of it up _on Moira_ , she can't help but cough for the next several seconds, actually having to pound at her chest to relieve the last of it. Managing at last to clear her throat, tears in her eyes at this point, she passes the mug back to the taller woman.

"Fucking warn a girl," she breathes out, voice a little raspier now as she tries not to cough again. " _Christ_."

Managing to sit upright once more, she sinks back into the chair and feels the tension beside her lessen a minute amount, as if Moira were acquiescing to her presence there now that it was too late for it not to be there. Jack feels a burning in her throat and clears it, her voice still a bit rough as she observes, "And you, O'Deorain? Black coffee. That's _horrible_."

"Yes, well," the taller woman intones in a lilting, smooth voice as she lifts the mug to take a sip, a flicker of amusement beneath that cool tone. "I did not make it for you. Did I, Jacqueline?"

Jack flicks a look at her sidelong, noting that the tinge of pink to her cheekbones is still there. Her attention is drawn back when Akande intones amusedly, "Good morning."

His dark eyes are shifting between them, and when they linger on the side of her throat overlong, then flick toward Moira with an arched brow, she feels that tall form beside her stiffen slightly once more and responds by draping an arm comfortably around Moira's shoulders in what she hopes is a comforting manner. Lifting her chin toward Akande, she asks dryly, "You drop by so I could set up your printer? New vidscreen? Remote vacuum on the fritz?"

She wants the coffee back, but doesn't steal it immediately, instead eyeing it for a moment before Moira simply relinquishes it to her.

A low and resonant laugh escapes the broad-shouldered man across from them when she takes a sip of her - _she guesses Moira's_ \- coffee, and mirth takes root in his eyes as he confirms, "Oh, I like you." With the shifting of his frame forward, he slides a porcelain plate across the table and inquires with a wide smile, "Peace offering?"

It doesn't take much incentive for her to reach over for one of the pastries on the table, take a bite; it's buttery, flakes a bit, some sort of fruit preserve in the middle. Jack takes another sip of coffee, a sidelong glance telling her well enough that the taller woman wants it back, and passes it over without a protest, "I'm listening. You have twenty minutes, but I'm subtracting fifteen for that shit you pulled yesterday."

He chuckles again, apparently delighted, and takes another sip of his coffee in turn as he sinks back into his chair, "I will be blunt, Jack. Moira was kind enough to share your current studies with me in some measure, if in brevity, and I was curious if you entertained freelance work with the potential of more steady employment based on results."

Her brow arches sharply at that, and when she glances toward Moira as if for an explanation, there's nothing on those freckled features that would betray so much as a thought, merely the arch of a ginger brow back at her.

"Our current mechanical specialist is not quite as..." he seems to mull the word around before settling on, "Innovative as it sounds you are capable. Omniums. Limited phase technology. You can keep the _rail gun_."

_Really?_

"What would I be doing?" she asks then, using a napkin to brush the crumbs from her fingertips. She certainly isn't opposed to making more credits. She sends enough of the bloody things home, and there's not often much left after she does, even with the sharp uptick in pay in Oasis.

"Whatever you would like, so long as there were results applicable to field combat." She has to admit that his honesty is a little refreshing. "If you were retained after a trial period, there would be perks. You could maintain your employment in Oasis as you wished. I would honestly encourage it, as access to their facilities and tools may prove useful in the long term, but the funding you would receive would render its necessity obsolete."

That catches her attention. Her dark eyes lift to his. He notices and adds as if it may be an important factor, "There are times you may be required to report in - travel as it were - likely back here, to Rialto. But that would be kept to a minimum and your current employment would be...encouraged to accommodate the additional strain on your schedule."

"Mm," Jack muses without responding just yet, mulling it over as she pilfers the coffee back from the taller woman settled beside her. May as well ask. "I assume this one," she nods toward Moira specifically, "Is affiliated with your business somehow?" 

No need to mince words. She looks at Akande and asks, "Any fraternization policies I should be aware of?"

Now that she thinks of it. She's not entirely certain what _Oasis's_ policies on inter-departmental fraternization are. 

There's a chuckle from the tall frame beneath her, and she could swear a hint of pink on those pale cheekbones when ocean-and-blood eyes flick towards her, and a lilting, dangerously smooth voice inquires, "Really, Jacqueline?"

Jack meets her gaze in return, then leans to place a peck to Moira's cheek, causing the other to clear her throat. She confirms in a low whisper, "Don't distract me. I'm negotiating."

"Chancer," comes the response. 

Akande appears to be stifling laughter when she looks back toward him, and he confides in a voice rich with it, "I'm certain that we can...make an exception, if need be."

_The devil is in the details._

The next day, after late-morning cappuccinos and a transport back to Oasis, Moira walks her from her car to the door of the small, back-street apartment in downtown Oasis - which is frankly, charming as hell. They stand there for a while, watching one another in the late afternoon light, and - she suspects - having no idea what they're doing now, after two days in Venice. But she likes the way that the taller woman looks at her in the sunlight, as much as she liked it in the dark, over breakfast, talking shop over buttered pastries and warm mugs. 

So her touch is gentle when her hands find the taller woman's jaw, drawing her down into a kiss that's warm and lingers far longer than it should, saying something between hello and goodbye, but what, she's not sure of right now. Maybe a promise for later. That this isn't the last time she wants to do this.

Moira's coppery lashes flutter for a moment, and when she draws back, the taller woman confides with a vague amusement, "If you keep that up, I am going to miss my meeting."

Her dark eyes rove over those angular, subtly freckled features in the warm afternoon, and when she brushes her nose lightly to the other's, she confides in a devilishly soft cadence, "Is that a promise or a threat, O'Deorain?" Then, with a smile that she _knows_ is cheekier than it should be, "I bet we'd fit in the back of your car."

Those scarlet and blue eyes blink once, and she's rewarded with another laugh, it's wild and rolling sound something that she's starting to enjoy _far more than she should_. Slender hands, one cool and the other warm, come to rest lightly at her hips as the taller woman observes, "You are incorrigible, I hope you realize?"

"You catch on quick. That why they gave you a PhD?" she replies, dark eyes warm as she looks up at the other. Hell. She leans up to kiss her again, soft and slow, the faint taste of mint lingering well after. Then, with seriousness - more a statement than a question, "Call me."

It comes as a surprise to her, the flicker of what seems shock on those angular features like the ripple of a stone cast into a still lake before it vanishes, as if that hadn't been a foreseeable event. She knows better than to chase what flits behind those mismatched, scarlet and blue eyes in the late afternoon light, or to press why it causes a faint hue of pink to rise beneath a freckled complexion, but she will remember it.

"I think I will," comes the response, Moira's voice low and pleasant. There's a kiss to her cheek now, chaste and light, before that touch withdraws and she watches a tall silhouette drift back towards the car down the way.

She fucking better.


	12. i'm burning like a house on fire, cut it like a razor wire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be a series of cute one-shots of them talking on the comm to advance toward a plotline in Junkertown. You can see how well that went.
> 
> This was basically what happened - 
> 
> Me: Jack no  
> Jack: Jack yes  
> Me: (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

Jack wouldn't exactly call that first call convenient in retrospect. Mostly because when it came through her comm at four in the morning, she was covered in machine oil, a sheen of sweat, and more metal flecks than she wanted to think about. Jumpsuit tied around her waist, her arm is scraped from where she brushed against a rough edge of the combat mecha she's working on, and that same arm is buried shoulder-deep in the chest of the damned thing, fighting with a stubborn cable that won't fit in the bracket it's supposed to. She ends up hauling up into the chest cavity to wrestle with it, cussing up a storm all the while. For fuck's sake. How the fuck did he not fucking affix this piece of shit cable before he put in _all the other fucking wires_.

Not checking the name on the comm when it chimes, she slips it over her ear and intones an annoyed, "Hello?" before inspecting the back end of the cable and announcing, " _Son of a fuck_."

"Jacqueline?" the voice on the other end of the line is cool, low, accented. It intimately reminds her of smoke and whiskey, and she freezes in an instant at the sound of it, dropping her wrench to the floor of the mecha's chest. There's perhaps a murmur of amusement to it now, as the other asks, "Is this a bad time?"

Jack clears her throat softly, her own voice a touch surprised even as heat - or maybe it's the flecks of metal - prickles over her skin at the shoulders, "Hey babe. That wasn't for you. I mean - the babe definitely was. Just not the fu- _you know what_."

"Let me try that again," Jack asserts, feeling a bit of heat along her cheekbones now. She clears her throat once again, wishing she could go maybe ten minutes without making an ass out of herself in front of Moira, and then repeats in a smoother cadence. "Hey babe. It's not a bad time. A little crook over a mecha deadline, but nothing that's not fixable - I think. Fucking Marks didn't wield in his control cables and we're down to the wire. Almost done, though. I think. I need an arc welder. Stay on the line a second?"

Pulling over the edge of the mecha's chest, she hooks her fingers around the lip to drop down the rungs, landing on her feet like a cat and sending the sound of boots on metal ringing through the empty machine shop. Stalking over toward the shelves of equipment to find an arc welder, she snaps the correct attachments into place and then intones pleasantly, "I'm good. What are you up to?"

A visor slid over her eyes to protect them, she scales back up the rungs with one hand, the voice in her ear low and somewhat incredulous, " _Babe?_ "

Clicking her tongue to the roof of her mouth, Jack replies amusedly, "If you can call me _rabbit_ , I should be able to call you _babe_."

There's a little scoff on the other end of the line as she strikes up the arc welder, and Moira counters, "Kindly utilize my name." Then, just as incredulously, as if in disbelief, " _Babe_." And another scoff.

Well. She did ask. Nicely even. Jack glances around the machine shop to double check that no one else is working late night, and flashes a mischievous smile to herself, before she answers, "Alright." There's a brief pause, before she intones in nothing short of a breathy moan into the comm, " _Moira_." Then, grinning wider as she strikes up the arc welder, "How was that?"

From the clattering sound on the other end, it definitely seems like the other woman has dropped the comm, the sound of fumbling heard on the line before it abruptly goes dead. It chimes softly again a few seconds later. She answers with, "At least I didn't ask what you were wearing?"

"A lab coat," comes the lilting and dangerously smooth voice on the other end. "You're incorrigible."

Starting to solder the brackets and cables into place, Jack drawls out with more than a little amusement, "Oh, is that all?"

" _Jacqueline_ ," Moira stresses the name, though a low current of mirth runs in that low voice.

Jack laughs at the sound, securing the first cable and then using a gloved hand to adjust the second. Amusement clear in her voice, she inquires, "What are you doing? Besides being a terminal night owl."

"There is something to be said about the pot and the kettle," the other woman retorts in her ear, though a smooth chuckle follows it. She's starting to love that sound. "I _was_ tending to laboratory work and saw that your key card was still in use in the machine shop. I had been considering asking if you would like to step out for coffee while my samples spin - I have about an hour - but that was before you started being an abominable brat."

"Oh, that stings, O'Deorain," Jack retorts with a snort of amusement. "I'm pretty sure brat is younger sibling territory, though. I'm the golden child, remember? Adored and envied by all."

"Someone is full of themselves," that lilting voice drawls out on the other end.

"Well, if you have an hour, I could be f-"

"Do not finish that sentence, Jacqueline Vargas," there's a soft chuckle nonetheless, and she hears what sounds like Moira leaning back in her chair. "Bloody shameless."

Securing the second cable, she tests the power flow through the mecha. Nothing critical. Good. Mischievously, Jack counters, "Mm. The full name treatment, O'Deorain? You throw a Ngaire between the Jacqueline and the Vargas, and maybe I won't even have to come up there."

"I'm about to terminate this call," Moira drawls out in response, though doesn't sound entirely serious about it.

"You like it," she teases back.

"A bold assertion, rabbit. Cite your sources," the other directs.

"Well..." Jack starts to say, only to laugh shortly there after when she's cut off.

"On second thought, refrain."

Third cable. Jackpot. Power readings are stable. Nothing critical still. Perfect. The rest of it can wait until her next _actual_ shift. Her voice a little more serious, and a smile curling unbidden at the corner of her mouth, she confides, "I had a good time in Rialto."

"As did I," comes an honest enough answer in her ear.

"I'd love to have coffee, but I'm going to need a shower before you're going to want to be anywhere near me," Jack asserts matter-of-factly as she clambers down from the mecha, the arc welder switched off and set on a nearby workstation with a loud 'clang'. "I'm covered in sweat and oil. How about after your samples are set?"

"That will depend on the results. If they are negative, I will need to restart the process," Moira answers with some thought. There's a distinct pause before the other observes, "There is a shower in my laboratory office, if you would like to use it. We could visit briefly, at the very least. Though I suppose it is late."

Hunting around for her backpack and slinging it over her shoulder, Jack tilts her head subtly and thinks on it a moment, hedging, "I usually bring a change of clothes with me to work. And there's that stand near the Chem building. If you want, I could pick up coffee on my way? Breakfast maybe? My treat." Then, with surprising honesty, "I'd like to see you."

"I would take a black coffee, if you would," that voice affirms, and Jack could swear it sounds a little pleased. She feels a grin creep over her features. Maybe this morning isn't shot to hell after all. 

"One terrible coffee, coming up," Jack confirms as she heads up towards the elevator. "What about for breakfast?"

"Nothing." 

Jack pauses, hits the ground floor on the elevator, then asks simply, "You remember the last time you ate something?"

There's a slow exhalation in the comm before Moira confirms, "Breakfast. Yesterday. I'll take a pastry or something similar."

"Ten-four," Jack advises as she heads toward the street, checking her comm quickly. "Be there in fifteen."

It doesn't take her too long at the stand, locally run, to pick up a black coffee, three Nano Colas, two shawarmas, and a croissant. It all smells amazing. She's fucking starving. It's all she can do not to break into one of them on the way, but she's not keen to eat metal shavings along with her breakfast.

It's easier to find the lab this time, having already been there once, and when the door hisses open, she stops outside it to place her toe to the heel of the opposite boot, stepping out of her shoes one at a time and leaving them behind to avoid tracking anything inside. Her socks aren't covered in grease and metal at least. Two taps of her toe to the door and it hisses open remotely. Everything before her is as pristine as ever, all white enamel and shining metal, the scent of antiseptic in the air. 

Moira's office door is ajar, so she shoulders it open with her pack so as not to smudge the polished metal, sauntering in to set the bag of food in a clear spot on the geneticist's desk, the drink carrier slid next to it. All too aware that she looks a hot mess, her dark tank top clinging to her with a sheen of sweat, and coppery skin smudged here and there with oil, machine grease, dirty with dust and flecks of metal that cling to its damp surface.

Moira, poised behind the desk, looks as impeccably put together as ever, the only indication that anything may be out of place the dark circles beneath mismatched eyes. Her lean shoulders are squared beneath a dark teal button down shirt, the white tie loosened a bit and the top several buttons undone now that the interns and lab assistance have long since made their way home for the day. 

"That's not just a lab coat at all," Jack teases lowly as she comes around the desk, ducking and, when the other doesn't draw back, placing a warm, brief kiss to the other's lips. She lets it linger a minute, feels a bit of warmth in the tips of her fingers. "I don't want to touch anything. Where's your shower?" she asks as she straightens up, tilting her head toward a nearby door with a questioning look.

"Jacqueline," comes a dangerously smooth response, scarlet and blue eyes roving over her as Moira assumes an expression that she can't quite read at first. Jack tilts her head, an arch to her brow and a mischievous curl to the corner of her lips when she finally places it, though mostly only because the geneticist appears to have snapped a datapad pen in half between her hand and thumb. 

"Really?" she inquires, clicking her tongue as if to chide the other, and despite her previous words, places a second kiss lightly to the other's lips. It's with vast amusement that she asks in a low murmur there, "This is what's doing it for you?" Shifting back to turn toward what she assumes is the adjacent bathroom, she halts at the door, a shoulder pressed to it to start to push it open, and casts a pointed look at the geneticist before lifting her chin and teasing, "You going to help me wash my back, O'Deorain?"

Turns out that's exactly what you should say if you want six and a half feet of tall, lean geneticist in the bathroom with her hands up your shirt. Not that Jack's complaining. Not that she could at moment. She's a little occupied with the way Moira's teeth have found her lower lip. The lab coat she has her hands wrapped in the front of is _definitely_ ruined, stained with machine oil and grime where it touches her skin. Her eyelids flutter at the feeling of a warm breath near her jaw, and she interrupts pre-emptively, "Do not. All that silvery shit is metal dust. You don't want it in your mouth."

Those hands are _fucking indecent_ , she decides as the one _under her bra_ traces a thumb along the curve of her breast, and she would make a sound aloud at that, but Moira's _tongue in her mouth_ is making it a little difficult. As a distant chiming sound rings out through the nearby office, the taller woman withdraws only enough to direct against her lips, "Then fix it." Seeming to calculate something, she then adds, "You have...optimistically ten minutes depending on my sample results."

_Fuck_. Well. She tries not to be disappointed when those hands withdraw, Moira's lean silhouette sweeping over toward the sink to pointedly scrub her hands before simply shucking the lab coat, and heading out into the office in her button-down and trousers to presumably find a fresh one. Standing there in silence for a minute, Jack exhales in a slow, fluid breath before she can will herself to move again. Her clothes are filthy. The bathroom is surprisingly nice, which she supposes shouldn't surprise her for one attached to a Minister's work area. White tile towards the upper half, cobalt blue tile towards the lower, with fixtures of glass and silvery metal, and a walk-in shower that's larger than the one in her apartment.

Kicking on the water to allow it to warm up, she strips out of her clothes and takes the time to double-bag them in plastic for later laundering, tossing the bag into the corner. As she glances in the mirror, she can still see the fading bruises from Rialto, some having faded to green with hints of yellows, others a faded purple. Finding the bottle of citrus soap in her bag, she slides open the frosted glass door and steps into the shower, hissing a little before quickly adjusting the water from scalding to just very fucking hot, and thinking as she looks toward the door that maybe cold would be better.

As she lathers up, the smell of citrus cuts through - she loves the smell of the soap they use in the machine shop. It's sharply orange with a hint of clove, and when it scrubs away the iridescent veneer of oil and grease from the mecha that still lingers on her skin, the fragrance of citrus and machine shop marries together, flickering hints of metal glittering as they're swept down the drain near her feet. She thinks it smells like Christmas in Junkertown.

Rinsing out her hair for the second time, she's combing through it with her fingers when she hears the door to the bathroom open and then close behind someone, a tall silhouette visible outside the opaque glass. She watches as if through fog, guesses at what must be the removal of a tie, the button down shirt - hazy outlines of colour replaced by nebulous white. The low echo of music can be heard above the hiss of water from the showerhead, but she can't place the tune, an unfamiliar melody in the distance. 

It would have been easier to just go at it when Moira's hands were up her shirt, she decides, as the shower door slides open and that tall, impossibly fucking tall, really, ethereal creature joins her in the roiling, silver-white mist kicked up from the spray. Because now they're both very naked and exposed in a way that there wasn't time for in Rialto, and they've lost the rhythm they had earlier. It's different, she thinks, mapping over freckle-dusted skin in silence, wondering if her eyes are as dark as the other's are when she looks up. For a moment, they're two near-strangers staring at each other, both knowing where they want this to go, but not how they plan to get there with as much efficacy as possible.

She says the first thing that comes to her mind, "God. You are so fucking ta-"

It's cut off when the other's thoughts apparently snap back into place far faster than her own. Moira cups her jaw with one hand, and then she's being kissed, and her hand is finding purchase in ginger hair to maintain that contact. Their teeth click briefly, once, then twice, before she readjusts. This is much better than anything that she was going to say, really. 

Her shoulders hit the cold tile behind her shortly thereafter, and that's familiar, albeit causes a shiver to run through her from the contrast of hot water and chill ceramic. Her other hand finds purchase around a lean arm, and it isn't really until she feels the muscle jump beneath the touch - the pressure of it, she realizes, and not the sensation - that she realizes which one, cooler than it should be beneath the warmth of her palm. 

"You aren't used to being touched there, are you?" Jack murmurs against the corner of the other's lips when they part for a moment, breath a little unsteady already. Chasing another kiss, though quicker than the last as they attempt to catch their breath, the taller woman thankfully obliges. She's never realized, until just now, how far up that lavender tint to the skin creeps. In the pauses between, she maps it with her fingertips - from the fingertips to where it darkens near the knuckles, at the joints, everywhere there's articulation - all the way to the apex of a leanly-muscled shoulder.

"No," comes the blunt answer after several long seconds, the hot water hammering down around them to leave the discolored skin all the more stark in its marked coolness. There's an almost guarded quality to the word, to whatever flits behind those mismatched eyes as they watch her, as if she'll decide that it's too much and call it all off. 

She remembers feeling that way. When she stood in the bedroom in Rialto and watched Moira trace over the scars. She remembers how her eyelashes fluttered when Moira kissed the one on her lip. It was open. Acceptance. She liked it more than she cares to admit. The first kiss she brushes to the curve of that cool shoulder, letting it linger for just a moment, is similarly gentle. _Trust me_ , it says. _Trust me to see you for what you are._

"Can you feel that?" Jack asks quietly, their dynamic shifting rapidly between heated and decidedly intimate in a way that makes her head spin. 

"Not well," comes the response, a low timbre that carries its own honesty, though seems anticipatory of her reaction. Her thumbs trace small circles where they rest, one on Moira's taloned hand, the other on a slim hip. When she glances up toward the other, it's more for permission than anything, a genuine surprise behind those mismatched eyes when she ducks her head to map out what the other can and cannot feel. She's rewarded with a low sound when she reaches where the skin starts to shift between a pale lavender to a milky, freckled white near the collarbone.

When she looks back up, dark eyes settling to vivid scarlet and deep blue, what she sees there is edge - like Moira's gaze is a weapon meant to protect whatever rests behind it. Jack observes lowly, not looking away, "You wear that shit like armor." And then tips up to press a kiss beneath an angular jaw, watching coppery lashes flutter for a moment with the action before whispering, "Take it off and let me see."

Anticipation. Hesitation. That's what she sees behind Moira's eyes now. The second hides behind the first.

They've come this far. Jack presses further, a soft promise, "I don't scare easy."

There's a moment then, Moira looking down on her like she's lost her mind at the request. Like it's too much, too soon, _far too personal_. They're doing this all in the wrong order. A moment when she thinks that taller frame may simply slip out of the shower, out from beneath the warm water, out into the office and then likely out of her life for good. But when those vivid eyes close, then open once more, what flits behind them is dark and familiar, something she's seen once before - if only in passing. The thought sets off an alarm in the back of her mind, whispers to her somewhere between instinct and common sense - _Maybe you should be afraid_. 

"Alright, rabbit," comes the answer, low and a little husky in the foggy air, stirring it up to kick eddies of silvery mist between them. What she sees under that armor is wanting, the wild love a fox has for the rabbit it sees in the field, conniving all the ways it can take it apart. It's sharp and haunting, beautiful still, like fractures in a bone, and in that moment, that smile is all edges to cut herself on.

She can't look away, feels for an instant perfectly still, and takes it for what it is, seeing herself reflected in those eyes, in colours of wine and the sea. Then her hand trails down a violet-tinged arm, warmer now from the hot water, and it traces the branching metalwork of the implants there as she goes, until she can lace her subtly calloused fingers through long, dangerously sharp ones. Another kiss brushes to that lavender and ivory shoulder, and she feels a shudder beneath it, but doesn't look away. Instead lifts her chin as she asks in a voice smooth against the murmur of running water, "Tell me what you need right now."

For only an instant, so swiftly that she would have missed it if she hadn't been looking - she can tell the taller woman doesn't know what to do with that. With the open admission, with its very open implications. There's a mere flickering behind those mismatched eyes like casting a stone into deep water. But then those freckled features settle, and the corner of that sharp-edged smile curls ever so slightly, and it's as if she's set a broken bone that's been out of place for so long that the other has nearly forgotten how to use it. 

When Moira speaks, control is what bleeds between the cracks to fill that smooth, low voice, a demand that sounds simple but tells her to relinquish it - deliver herself into the other's hands and trust that they won't do what those eyes promise and _tear her apart_ , "Give me a word, rabbit."

There it is. New territory that she can tell the other wishes to visit. New territory for her, at least. Moira looks likes a cartographer, familiar, but eyeing the borders of new geography. 

"Venice," the word comes easily, conjures memories of the sun slipping in through the curtains, of limbs twined in soft white sheets. 

"Venice," Moira repeats, and her accent is a little more pronounced with the confirmation of understanding. When the taller woman speaks once more, the tone is huskier, all whiskey and silk with a current of steel beneath it. "Turn around."

Her dark eyes flick toward the cobalt tiles, and she unwinds her fingers from where they lace through Moira's colder. When she turns to face it, a hand comes to rest upon the back of her neck, and that's cold too. It guides her forward, until she's pressed to the ceramic tile, then relinquishes its hold, and she hears the other exhale slowly, then murmur near her ear, "Stay there."

Cheek resting against the cool, cobalt-blue tile, she watches condensation bead along it along it, shivering again - though whether at the temperature shift or otherwise, she can't tell. 

"Grand," sounds near her ear. God. It's both. It's definitely fucking both, she thinks as the teeth scrape the shell of her ear afterwards and she shivers again. "I'll be right back. Don't move."

The sound of feet on the wet tile, followed by the door sliding open - and for the briefest moment, she wonders if _Moira just fucking left her there_. Then it slides back open, and she feels hands curl around her wrists and draw them behind her back. Silk. Moira's tie, she realizes, wrapping around her wrists firmly enough to keep them together, loose enough not to hurt, tied off with _decidedly too much practice_. Hell.

Where the fuck did she even find this woman?

_In the machine shop when you couldn't keep your goddamn mouth shut, then outside the laboratory when you couldn't keep your hands to yourself,_ she reminds herself. This requires a certain measure of trust. More than it took to jump on a transport and go to Rialto with a stranger? Yes. More than she's willing to give? She's not sure. She can feel her heart hammering in her chest, the cold tile against her skin, a hand that traces over the wet skin at her spine, then snakes around her hip to splay long fingertips just below her navel. When the taller woman steps forward, trapping her between a lean body and the wall...well. God, that's pretty fucking good already, and she has to bite back a low sound in her throat. 

She can feel Moira's lips brushing the shell of her ear when the other speaks, and it's maddening, almost as maddening as how the hand pressed between her and the wall strokes a slow circle against the skin near her hip, "Now."

It takes her a moment to recognize that the other hand, all lavender complexion and metal, mostly based on how cool it feels, is curling beneath her jaw - around her throat - to apply a faint, though not yet uncomfortable pressure. Jesus H. Christ. All she can think of is an old world picture Pao had shown her once. It said _mark me down as scared and horny_. She's never identified with vintage art on a spiritual level before. She's about to crawl out of her goddamn skin.

There's a nip to her ear and she jumps at the sensation, then shivers at the chuckle that follows it. Moira's voice is low and lilting in her ear, "Are you sure you want to do this, rabbit?"

Something jangling in her mind untangles a little at that, quiets and calms. Both times now, there's been an olive branch - an option. An opt-in or out. It's a question, but one that decides this for her. Trust. She lifts her chin in a slight nod, and gives it to her. 

"Remember your word," Moira murmurs, and the way that they're standing so close and _not doing anything_ is only amping up the suspense. "If you cannot remember it, tap me thrice. I want you to do it now so I know that you can."

Jack exhales in a low, shaky breath and rolls her shoulders slightly, fingertips finding skin behind her and tapping the prerequisite three times.

"Grand," sounds near her ear once again, lower and a little huskier than before. The warm hand between her and the wall shifts lower, and she inhales sharply when it slides home. Moira is a _fucking tease_ , she decides at the slowness, the lightness of that touch. There's another nip at her ear, and the devil's voice whispers, "Not a sound unless I tell you. Do you understand, rabbit?"

God. That will be a trick.

"I understand," Jack confirms in a voice that jumps _more than a little bit_ when that fucking hand between her thighs finds a slow, stroking rhythm. She's going to die of a fucking heart attack in the fucking bathroom of the Genetics lab, and if she does, it's going to be _absolutely worth it_. 

She feels the hand at her throat curve a little tighter, though not much, a warning - an implication. That voice thrums in her ear again, dangerously low and smooth as silk, and her pulse jumps again, "Did I tell you to speak?"

Gooseflesh breaks out over her shoulders. Jack breathes out in confusion, "No?" before she realizes what she's doing. _Shit. Shit fucking damn._

There's a sudden even pressure around her throat as long fingers close around it, staying that way for several seconds in a way that _decidedly_ catches her attention. It doesn't go unnoticed that when that happens, the _other hand_ slips farther, loses its slow, light touch, to push in firmly in a way that is _fucking indecent_ and makes her toes curl against the tile underfoot. When the hand at her throat loosens, the tempo slows again, and she sucks in a breath in a shuddering gasp against the cool tile. 

"Oh, you're _bad at this_ , rabbit," that voice is the devil in her ear, lips brushing there lightly in time with the words, a breathy chuckle following after. God, that fucking voice is doing things to her that it absolutely should not be. "Let us try again. Did I tell you that you could speak?"

Her breath is coming hard now, and she knows that pressed to her back, a hand around her throat, and the other...well. Moira has to be able to feel it. She bites her lip to steady herself, having the distinct thought that she's going to lose this. Knowing that she's probably going to bite right through that bitch well before she's able to _not make a sound_ , but glancing over her shoulder with dark eyes anyways and managing a little nod. 

There's a chuckle in a response, a low and husky amusement to that whiskey and smoke voice as a simple word is breathed into her ear, "Grand."

Moira makes her work for it. Chase it. That's the game. When she's quiet, that touch is maddeningly light and never lingers. It teases. It drives her _fucking insane_ until she's almost begging for it. And when she caves and does, the hand around her throat inevitably tightens and Moira fucks her hard against the ceramic tile. At least until that hold eases again for her to suck in a breath, and then it goes back. It's good. It's real fucking good and real fucking infuriating, and when Moira seems to have finally decided to have mercy on her, it isn't really mercy _at all_.

It's a husky _If you want it, you have to be quiet, rabbit_ and about three false starts before Jack manages to _actually stay quiet enough_ to pass muster. All she can hear is the low rush of water, skin on skin, Moira's breathing in her ear, hers on the wall, and her fucking heart hammering in her chest. And when she finally seizes up around those long fingers, the breath driven out of her all at once, she absolutely bites through her fucking lip trying not to scream against the shower wall. Absolutely. 

She's pretty sure that the only thing holding her up is the fact she's pressed between Moira and the wall, and she watches a droplet of blood trickle down the blue ceramic, dissipating when it hits the water at her feet to wick down the drain. She can taste copper in her mouth, feel tremors in her slim frame - definitely shaking, Moira has a way with that it seems like - and the hand at her throat recedes to instead become an arm wrapped around her waist, holding her while Moira waits for her to come down.

"You did well," Moira murmurs near her ear, a kiss placed to the line of her jaw as her breathing starts to settle. 

"Quiet is...not my fucking strong suit," Jack breathes out after a minute, her voice trembling more than a little. 

"I know," comes a more than a little smug response, another kiss pressed to her jaw and making her eyelids flutter. "I like that about you."

Her arms, she finds, are surprisingly stiff once her wrists have been untied, but she turns anyways, sliding them around a tall, slender frame and finding herself pleasantly surprised when the other reciprocates. Simply holds her for a time, the occasional gentle touch to her shoulders or back. She has no idea how long they've been standing there. The water bill in Oasis has to be astronomical. After a time, a chiming sound emanates from the office and those angular features turn toward it. 

"Go check on your samples," Jack encourages, evenly enough now that her breathing has steadied, though when they draw apart, she finds long fingers grasping her jaw to tip her face up.

Mismatched eyes linger on her lip, and Moira affirms in a low timbre, "I will tend to that in a moment, Jacqueline." There's a light kiss to her cheek, and then that tall silhouette opens the shower door and disappears. 

Raking her hand through her tangled hair, Jack looks up toward the showerhead and exhales slowly in a fluid breath, finishing her shower before stepping out into the cooler air as well. The bottle of citrus soap is tucked back into her bag, and it doesn't take her all that long to towel dry her hair as best she can, the rest of her, and slip into a pair of black joggers and a replacement tank top. Setting to work before it dries in a _fucking mess_ , she brushes through her long, dark hair, and twists it into a loose braid over her shoulder to keep it out of her face. 

Settled sideways on what she'd call similar to a locker-room bench, she looks up when the door opens, tying a band around the end of the braid to hold it. Moira O'Deorain has no business looking that good in a half-buttoned shirt and slacks. The other woman steps back over and settles beside her, uncapping what she assumes is...yeah - they're starting to get real familiar with medigel, she muses. Possibly because O'Deorain is the devil. Probably, if she were the betting sort, because neither of them has gotten laid _in a while_. At least she assumes, on one count. 

"This is a touch deeper than I anticipated," Moira observes clinically, her cool fingertips probing Jack's lower lip to inspect where teeth sank into it. 

Jack snorts softly, smirks a little, her dark eyes glittering with amusement as she counters, "You told me to be quiet. I'm very goal-oriented."

That earns her the low thrum of a chuckle, Moira's mismatched eyes harboring a glint of their own amusement as she smears a little medigel on a fingertip, then takes Jack's jaw in one hand and uses the other to apply the cold substance on the outside of her lip, the sting there starting to lessen as the skin binds.

She wants to kiss her again. Badly. The slow, languid sort of kiss that lasts. She's a sucker for this shit, she decides. The _afterwards_.

So when the other has finished with the application of medigel, she runs her tongue over her lower lip and feels it a little bruised, maybe, but certainly not lacerated, but feigns a flinch anyways and confides, "I think you missed a spot."

When those angular features duck nearer to her own, so near that she can count the smattering of freckles that dust over them, she makes good on it. Her hands find Moira's jaw to cup it, and she brushes her lips to the others gently, then tilts her head subtly as if to ask for permission, finds it given when Moira's lips part with a low sound. Yeah, she's a sucker for this shit, she decides as her thumbs stroke the line of that angular jaw.

"Get dinner with me later this week," is what she murmurs against the corner of Moira's mouth a moment later, when they part. A flicker of surprise dances behind those mismatched eyes, and she _wonders why_ , but doesn't question it, instead electing to close the distance between them a second time. They're doing this in all the wrong order. In between the second and the third, she breathes out, "Thursday?"

"Sunday," comes the answer eventually, a low, displeased sound chasing after it when the comm alert chimes again. Mismatched eyes meet hers, and she could swear that the other's cheekbones are a little pink for some reason or another. "I'm never going to get any work done with you in here."

"Probably not," Jack affirms back, brushing her nose lightly to the other's before stealing another kiss. One for the road. She sinks back afterwards, though pauses to ask once more, "Sunday? I'll message you?"

There's a nod. It's decided. 

She shows herself out.


	13. not like the smoke that fills these streets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ** Akande and Jack have a great working relationship  
> ** Jack and Moira can't talk to each other without being awful  
> ** There will eventually be fluff, they're just awful people

She's settled on the couch with a half-eaten shawarma in her hands when Bix makes his way out into the living room for the morning, still sluggish from his power-up cycle. Jack shifts a little lower on the cushions to get comfortable, propping her feet up on the coffee table in a way that she's _certain_ Galveston would hate, if he were awake. He's funny for a Junker. Neat. Even his flat in 'town is meticulously arranged, and she's watched him sweep the red dust that's seemingly on _everything_ there up three or four times a day on a minimum. 

Her coppery skin is still pleasantly warm, and while the shawarma is decidedly colder than intended, it's still the very best sort of street food, she decides as she savors the combination of slightly greasy marinated lamb and pickled vegetables wrapped up in a messy parcel of grilled bread.

Lifting her chin in a nod when Bix sees her, Jack crumples the wrapper as she finishes her shawarma in what constitutes too-few too-large bites, bad habits learned in a machine shop by someone most often in a hurry to get back to mecha schematics as soon as humanly possible. For a long moment, she eyes the second shawarma in its wrapper, then picks it up to start to peel back the foil and wax paper. Bix chirrups, a little wave offered in greeting, then flicks his green-blue optics over the cans on the stand near her with a tinny sigh and disappears into the kitchen.

The sound of running water emanates from the other room before he returns with an overlarge thermos, setting it on the stand beside her with a pointed look and indicating a fill line of 64 ounces, then sinking down on the couch beside her to nestle closer. 

"Sixty-four ounces of water - today," the omnic demands tiredly, kicking back in much the same fashion she is - his metal and plastic feet crossed at the ankles as he sets them on the table.

"Morning, handsome," Jack intones before taking another bite of shawarma, thinking that the second one is just as good at the first. Maybe she should save a little bit for Chance. Maybe half. Half. She takes a sip from the nearby thermos, realizing as she does _exactly how thirsty she is_. Okay. So maybe drinking only cola today was a bad idea.

A cold fingertip touches her neck a second later, sliding over the outline of what she presumes is one of like...god, too many marks that have found their way there in the last few hours. His voice still a little tinny from his power-up cycle, Bix asks of her, "You have a street-fight with a vampire on your way back from the shop?"

"Yeah, it got me real good. Left my crucifix in my other bag. _Stupid_ ," Jack answers back with a smooth current of amusement, another sip of water taken. When he starts to say something else on the matter, she interjects, "Not another word, mother hen. Cover-up is a thing exists _and_ I'm drinking a whole glass of water just for you."

"You say that, but I know you," Bix retorts with a tinny snort, his optics flickering with amusement. Bumping his shoulder to hers, he observes, "You'll just walk around like that. Like you earned some sort of merit badge."

"Didn't I?" Jack drawls back mischievously.

He laughs at that, then asserts, "Plus you never do anything just for me. You're too fickle." He places a metal and plastic hand over where his heart would be if he was human, where his control core actually is, and announces, "Just like the tides."

"Dramatic," is all Jack intones, though the corner of her mouth curls up into a little smirk at his continued antics. Knocking lightly at his side with her knuckles, she asks, "How's your patch holding." 

"Good," Bix confides, looking down at the metal on his side. "I kind of like that it doesn't match. Makes me look different from the other units." His optics light up with mirth briefly, but when they settle into a cool blue-lavender, she knows that he's thinking too hard about something. Hesitantly, as if he isn't certain that he wants the answer, "You're still seeing her?"

"Yeah," Jack answers noncommittally, deciding a quarter of the way in that the second shawarma is too much and sliding it back onto the stand beside her to nurse her water instead. "I like her. She's not like...well, anyone I've ever met before really."

He makes a thrumming noise in his voicebox, then confides more quietly than before, "I don't like how she looks at you."

Amusement curls into her voice as she looks over at him, observing after another sip of water, " _You_ don't have to like how she looks at me."

Bix is silent for a minute, as if uncertain how to respond to that, but when he speaks again his voice is uncharacteristically soft, "She's dangerous, Jack. You can see that, right? Maybe you didn't see how she looked at you down in the garage." Another pause as he mulls over his words, "Like maybe you were a wild animal that she suddenly realized could talk and reason, something to be dissected on a table. Like even though she let you touch her, she was going to make you bleed for it later."

Been there, done that, is all Jack can think as she nestles down into the couch a little more, her thoughts wandering. Maybe more like _been there, bit through my lip in the genetics lab bathroom_. It's definitely not the _worst_ thing that has ever happened, and for a moment, she can feel hot water on her skin, the scent of machine oil and sharp, citrus soap.

Her attention snaps back when Bix asks, "What happens when she picks you apart to see what makes you tick?"

"God, I'd let her," she murmurs without thinking about it. It's none of his fucking business, really. But after this morning, there's a real short list of things that she thinks she _might not_ be down for, and her resolve would probably dwindle if those scarlet and blue eyes were looking at her, or she heard that low, husky voice in her ear. It's not, she supposes, that she's never let someone else take the lead in bed. But she's certainly never let anyone _take that much control_ , and she finds that not only did she like it, but it required a certain amount of trust. Trust that had not been abused.

" _Jacqueline_ ," Bix complains with a groan, and she jumps a little when his cold hand comes to rest on her forearm, painted metal and plastic stark against the copper of her skin. She hasn't been paying the most attention, though realizes that her fingertips have lifted to her throat and are tracing beneath her jaw in light fashion.

"Mm?" she intones noncommittally, decides to finish of her water in lieu of actually admitting to not paying attention to him.

"I'm serious," Bix asserts in a sincere enough manner. She doesn't doubt that his concern is well-intentioned, if unneeded. "I'm not saying that I believe all of it, but you should hear _half_ of what I've heard people say about her and what she gets up to down in that lab. The turnover rate in Genetics interns is _atrocious_."

Oh, Jack has a fair idea of what she gets up to in that lab, and it sure as shit isn't Genetics interns. Not with the amount of steam they just blew off. It's been a while.

Mulling over her thoughts for a minute, Jack leans forward slightly in her seat, tries to keep a smooth note of vexation out of her voice as she asserts, "I love you. Like an annoying, mechanized little brother. But it's my business who I see. I don't have to justify that." Tone a little smoother, she points out, "There's a lot of people who talk shit about their bosses, Bix. Especially when their bosses are women, and even more often when those women are experts in their field _and not apologetic for it_."

"They've talked a lot of shit about us, too," she points out pragmatically, thinking back to the first couple of days the Junkers had spent in Oasis. "Doesn't make it true. So don't be such a fucking shit about it."

There had been more than a few _looks_ on their integration into the Ministries, and Chance had actually had someone's drink thrown on him in the street. The number of Human Resources meetings that the Junker crew has sat in on so far, for one reason or another, is phenomenal. Half were caused by Oasis staffers who talked a little too much shit and half were caused by Junkers who decided to handle that the Junkertown way, instead of adhering to the law of the land.

He makes a low, tinny sound like a huff at that, his arms folding over his chest as he mulls it over. After a few seconds, he admits, "That's fair." Then, with a flick of his optics in her direction, and the tap of a cold fingertip to the side of her neck once more, "Just don't let her mark up your meatsuit too bad, Vargas."

Jack grins at that, taking a sip of her water as she lifts her middle finger at him. She retorts with amusement, "It's my meatsuit, Bix. I'll do what I want with it."

Replicating a soft snort in his voicebox, Bix withdraws his touch and instead bumps his shoulder to hers instead, "What are you doing today?"

"Mm. Nap is the first order, I think," Jack replies, settling comfortably against his shoulder and resting her head there. "At least for a couple hours. Then more schematics. Going to be gone this weekend, by the way. Got some freelance work out of town."

"Huh. I didn't realize that you were doing freelance again. Where?" the omnic asks, then points toward the thermos again. "What do they have you working on?"

"Really?" she laughs out, rolling her eyes a little as she looks toward the half-empty thermos. She'll finish it soon. "Venice. Met a guy while I was out there who pays pretty good for basic machine work. It's a nice bump to my check, and usually little stuff. Coffee machine. Basic tech."

Her brow furrows as the comm chimes softly, an incoming message from Akande. She shoots him one back and intones with a peck to Bix's cheek, "Gotta nap. Then a vidcall to fix some remote lights." Standing up to head down toward her room, she pauses long enough to pick up the thermos, then heads on her way. 

\--- 

Hunched over a disassembled and motley arrangement of tech from her position crouched in a too-large chair behind Akande's _massive_ mahogany desk, Jack searches through her toolkit for something that will work to adjust a troublesome fitting, twisting it until her knuckles are pale. The fitting breaks with a sharp _snap_ , ricocheting off the nearby wall to shatter what she hopes is not a particularly expensive vase. 

He stares at her incredulously from the opposite chair, in the midst of a comm call with...she honestly doesn't know, but it's none of her business. 

" _I told you_ ", is what she mouths at him. She had told him. A workspace would have been better, but he _had to_ take this call and she _had to_ get this fixed for him as soon as possible, so his office it was. 

"No, it is nothing," he intones into the comm as to the source of the noise, before she sets back to work. 

Hopping down from the chair, her boots over near the door to leave her padding across the marble in her socks, she hunts around behind the stand to find the broken fitting. His office is exceptionally nice. Dark timber and black marble, with traditional art from where she would guess to be West Africa, the bolder colours a striking accent to their monochrome backdrop. It feels more personalized than Moira's office in the Genetics ministry. Having to lay down on the floor to reach under the stand and catch up the bit of scrap, she turns it over once she has it, seeing the black material caking the inside of it.

It looks like stone, dark and porous. Something that should definitely not be on the inside of a fire cylinder. _Of course that would fucking jam it_. The metal itself is pitted on the inside, charred and warped as if burned. Her first thought is lava, but that's ridiculous, isn't it? As she pushes back up to her feet, she tosses the fitting over toward Akande, who catches it in one broad palm to inspect it with a thoughtful, "Hm."

It's cute, really, that he thinks she doesn't know what the tech is. Whoever he has on the payroll that told him to tell her it was a fire cylinder was _clever_ , because it's close - she'd even fix it the same way if it was. Jack is certainly not about to tell him that it's the firing mechanism for a _concussion gauntlet_ , or that she knows without a shadow of a doubt who she's doing freelance work for now.

It's a paycheck. She's done worse tech work for less credits, and if she's being honest, at least she fucking likes Akande Ogundimu.

"How bad is it?" 

Speak of the devil. He must have ended his call, because now he's speaking in her direction with a low, smooth, resonating voice. 

"I mean, not great," Jack confirms as she drops back down into the chair, more kneeling in it than sitting as she looks over the accumulated tech. "You buy this shit in the big and tall section?"

"Are you in need of a booster seat, Jack?" Akande cracks back swiftly, the corner of his lips curling up. 

"I just might be," she replies with a snort, leaning over the desk to pick up a bit of metal and inspect it thoughtfully. With her elbow on the smooth timber of the desk and her chin propped in her hand, she flicks her dark eyes up to meet his as she asks, "You going to tell me how you got cooled stone inside of this?"

"No," Akande answers with what sounds like amusement, his smooth-shaven scalp glinting in the overhead lights. He shifts his shoulders slightly then, straightening the front of his dark suit jacket as he adds, "I am paying you to fix it. You are not paying me to tell stories."

Jack makes a face at him at that, teasing enough, and draws up an image of the mechanism on her holoscreen to show him. "It's overheated, so you have some warping here," she indicates three more places, "and here, which is what caused it to seize up and jam. That and the asphalt you packed in it, inexplicably."

Holding her datapad pen in the corner of her mouth so she can spin the holoscreen around to show him, she murmurs around it, "I pulled up the parts I need already. If you spring for expediting them, I should have them out on Wednesday and it'll only take me a couple hours to fix it."

"Wednesday," he observes with what sounds like displeasure, a low sound made in his chest as he inspects the list for a long moment. "Is there no way to expedite the process further? What about the non-coated alloy?"

"Well," Jack muses around the pen, setting down the piece of metal she's been toying with to pluck it from between her teeth. "You use the non-coat and it takes less time to get here, right?" 

He nods, watching her as he follows where this is going.

"And then it takes more time when you pack it full of rocks again and it explodes," she observes, lifting her chin toward Akande as she tacks on, "Probably taking someone's dumb-shit arm or leg with it. You ever spend an afternoon picking shrapnel out of someone, boss?" She points the pen at him in emphasis, "Head's up, it fucking sucks."

"Are you always this frank with your employers?" Akande follows up with, a murmur of amusement beneath his resonant timbre as he observes her.

"You always cockblock potential new hires?" she counters smoothly, "Because you're still on my shit list for that, by the way." With a broader grin, resting a hand lightly over her heart as she holds his gaze, Jack confides, "Even if it was the beginning of our beautiful working relationship, Akande."

His laughter is like thunder in the distance, it rumbles and rolls, mesmerizing in its own way. Without further protest, he leans forward to activate a small, platinum credit chip and authorize the purchases she has detailed for shipment. 

"It was fifteen minutes," he counters amusedly, still chuckling as he closes out the holoscreen, and leans back in his chair to point out. "Which I'm certain did not ruin your evening, given you were still present in the morning."

"You say that now," Jack quips, pointing a finger at him as she advises, "But I'll never get those fifteen minutes back to know what I could have done with them." Mirth glints in her dark eyes now. This is fun. Rialto is starting to become a good place for her. "Was there anything else you needed put together before you're done torturing me for the day?"

"Actually." It's not so much what he says as how he says it. Oh, this doesn't bode well. "I had thought that before we adjourned for the day, we could take a detour by the gym and spar. I'm interested in seeing what you are capable of."

"You're kidding, right? I'm a mechanic," Jack retorts with amusement, flicking a pointed look over her erstwhile companion at the statement. Then, cracking her knuckles in an over-exaggerated fashion, she points out, "I guess I could kick your ass a little."

That's not how it goes. That's not how it goes _at all_.

How it goes is sweating buckets in black work-out clothes that the facility provides, because of course it does when you own a fancy business-front in Rialto, while your new employer boxes the absolute shit out of you. They've been at this for forty-five minutes and she's never been put through her paces like this in her fucking life.

Not in the scrublands training with her mother. Not in the Scrapyard knocking the shit out of mechas and their pilots. Not scrapping with scavvers out in the Outback. 

Akande is a motherfucking goddamn monster and she has no idea how anyone that tall and broad at the shoulder can move like he does, like fucking lightning. Thank god he's wearing gloves and pulling his goddamn punches or her ears would be ringing a lot more than they already are. She almost thinks she's dodged a jab at her jaw, but it turns into a hold when she ducks into it, and fairly soon, she's flung on her back on the mat with enough force to knock the wind out of her. 

Laying there, sucking in a breath when she's able, Jack stares up at her sparring partner and slowly lifts a hand to flip him off. 

He _laughs_.

"Keep your hands up," Akande chuckles out, shaking his head slowly as he watches her lift the other middle finger as well. "You need to focus on your movement. You are too up front when you should be focused on _avoiding_. Aggression serves you well when your opponent is more matched in size or you are more manueverable, but if I were to grapple you, it would be _over_."

"You sound like my fucking mother," Jack replies a little breathlessly from the mat, though takes his hand when he offers it and levers back up to her feet. Sweat stings her eyes. "If you hit the ground, you're dead is her...maybe third favourite thing to say."

"Your mother sounds like a smart woman," Akande retorts, clapping her on the shoulder and holding her there a moment. His expression thoughtful, he advises like a professional, "Your foundations are not bad, but your form is too reckless." With a nod toward her, he states as if it were settled, "Clear two days a week. You'll come to Rialto and we will see you trained properly."

"I'm just a mechanic," she retorts, though a low thread of offense creeping into her tone at his assessment of her ability to hold her own. It's not like she's never _fought anyone before_. Hell, she held her own in Junkertown _just fine_.

He chuckles lowly, bumping his wrapped knuckles lightly to her chin before retorting in a smooth, resonant voice, "No one is ever _just_ anything, Jack." Taking a stance once more, he nods toward her, a measuring look in his eyes as he orders, "Now get your hands _up_."

\---

Hours later, she all but shuffles into the dimly-lit room near the gym that Akande has assigned to her, her things already collected from her booked hotel room and set here for her after he decided that her two days this week were going to follow immediately. For what she's being paid to work this 'freelance' gig, it's well worth the effort, even though she's not sure she's going to _survive_ the next few days until those parts come in at this rate. Bunk 303. Her new home away from home in Rialto. 

Her comm is chiming softly in the bag over her shoulder, a sheen of sweat glistening on her skin as she unshoulders it onto the room's small desk and hunts around for it amidst her things. O'Deorain. Figures. They'd been talking via message on and off throughout the day. 

"Hey babe," Jack greets a little breathlessly, wondering when the last time she felt this sore was. Sure, he had let her take a few breaks, but god. She can't even imagine what this is going to feel like tomorrow. Maybe there's an ice machine somewhere.

A little scoff sounds in response, one she suspects from its repetition is reserved for her calling the taller woman _babe_. She loves it. It makes her grin. 

Voice a little sly in a way she could in no way back up right now, Jack drawls out, "You feeling coffee again already?"

"Jacqueline," there's actually a little chuckle that chases the words. "Your phone etiquette is as dreadful as ever. How are you?"

"Fucking exhausted," Jack confides back with a little laugh of her own, perching on the edge of the desk in lieu of sitting down on the bed. "No one warned me that working for Akande meant he was going to throw my ass into fight club. Fucker makes Junkers _look soft_ , Moira."

Another sound of amusement followed by a slow inhalation and long exhale. She determines two things - one, Moira is in an excellent mood at the moment. Two, she's fairly certain that the other is outside on a smoke break.

"What are you up to?" Jack asks during that pause, tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear as she sweeps another look over the small bunk. It's not bad, to be honest. Looks comfortable by some standards, if mostly utilitarian. Full bed with two pillows and a few blankets. Dresser. Vidscreen. Desk and chair. The window overlooks the canals, she realizes as she pulls back the curtain. "I mean, besides smoking like a chimney."

"Astute," Moira remarks simply, amusement nonetheless curling through the other's low and lilting timbre. "I had been taking a break from my lab work and was curious to see how your excursion to Rialto was proceeding."

"Oh, so you knew?" Jack asks teasingly in response, a smile curling over her features perhaps at the easiness of their conversation, or perhaps how much she's enjoying it. She cracks the window open to allow a bit of fresh air in. Perks of the third floor that you don't have to worry so much about leaving your windows open, "No warning about how many times my dumb ass was going to hit a training mat today?"

"If you sustained any injuries in your sparring practice, I would be happy to offer you a complimentary physical when you return to Oasis," comes the response in her ear, a wicked implication behind its smoky timbre. Oh, she _is_ in a good mood.

"You're feeling _fresh_ tonight, O'Deorain," Jack can't help but laugh, her dark eyes glittering with amusement. "Lucky thing I'm not in Oasis, or you wouldn't be getting _anything_ done in that lab."

"I'm certain I would accomplish something, rabbit," Moira remarks on the other end of the line, another exhalation heard. She can almost smell the smoke.

Jack clicks her tongue off the roof of her mouth, a low sound of amusement emanating from her as she asks with seeming seriousness, "You want to pick me up from the airport on Thursday? Put your money where your mouth is?"

"Perhaps," comes an low, lilting voice on the comm. Noncommittal now. Jack knows when she's being teased.

She knows how to tease right back. A glint of mischief in her eyes at the thought, she leans back on the desk and settles her shoulders to the wall, switching the camera on and flipping it to face her. The quick snap she takes of herself is fresh from Akande's hell-gym, hair damp and coppery skin yet bearing a sheen of sweat. She has a fair idea of what the reaction will be.

Sending it off, she hears the soft chime as it arrives on the other end of the line and asks with amusement, "How about now?"

The sound of a drag on a cigarette, the slow exhalation that follows, before Moira responds with a low amusement, "What time does your flight come in?"

Nailed it.

"Seven-thirty on Thursday," Jack answers back, fully aware that her grin carries through into her voice.

"You're awfully smug for someone complaining about some light calisthenics, rabbit," comes a low drawl in response. Then, a concession, "I'll come to get you."

"Light calisthenics," Jack observes incredulously, another laugh escaping her. "You're an asshole. He make you do this shit too?"

"Once a month, if I decide to show up," Moira responds with seeming amusement at the fact. Of course she'd just do what she wants. Of course. "Not quite twice a week. You must be a special project."

"Ha. Very funny," Jack follows with, shoulders shaking a bit with laughter. Then, with something between curiosity and disbelief, "You fight?" Moira doesn't _move_ like she trains for a fist-fight. "I find it hard to believe that you get thrown down in the dirt like the rest of us. Or a mat. Whatever he's feeling like that day, I guess."

There's a husky chuckle on the other end of the line, followed by a smooth, "I try to avoid getting knocked down, Jacqueline. But, yes. I box primarily. We could practice sometime if it suits you." There's a dangerously smooth lilt to that voice now, "The difference is, I'm liable to throw you down _anywhere I like_."

Well, that does it. She feels the temperature in the room spike, heat creeping up her neck to burn uncomfortably over the shell of her ears. Moira O'Deorain is _something else_ when she wants to be.

"That was for the picture," is what she hears, before there's another low exhalation of smoke. 

"Christ," Jack intones on her own exhale, her hand coming to rest on the back of her neck. It's the only thing she can think of to say.

"He has nothing to do with it," there's a low sound of amusement. That woman _knows exactly what she's doing_.

"We'd better change the topic, or I'm going down to the airport and Akande is going to be pissed in the morning," Jack confides mischievously into the comm once she's pulled her thoughts back together. "How was your day?"

She loves that fucking chuckle, she decides when she hears it again. _God, you have it bad, Vargas. Real fucking bad._

They talk far too late. Dawn comes far too early.


	14. strike like a match i'm burning up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ** Trashfire lesbians accomplish nothing but being consistently horny on main  
> ** Shameless smut  
> ** Fluff and angst in next chapter

They reschedule three times. 

Once because the tech parts that she needs to fix the _fire cylinder_ won't arrive until Wednesday. 

Once because the new genetics intern ruins four days worth of Moira's test samples and sets deadlined research back. Jack has to admit she empathizes there. She's not sure she'd get fuckall done if she was a genetics intern.

The third time they reschedule is because Akande last-minute cancels her flight _back to Oasis_ upon deciding that the next week's two days will start promptly on Sunday. She had tried to punch him in the kidney during sparring for that. She mostly got thrown onto the training mat for her trouble.

They have the best of intentions when Moira picks her up at the airport, almost a week and a half after their originally scheduled date. The best of intentions to spend the night out in Oasis. The best of intentions that are shot in the face as soon as they're alone for more than four seconds, and their date ends before it can even start, promptly in the backseat of a towncar in the geneticist's garage. 

The windows are fogging up in the cool air of a desert night, and Jacqueline realized about ten minutes ago - and with a decided satisfaction - that it's much easier for her to both get and keep the upper hand in an enclosed space. While it certainly hasn't been something they _extensively planned_ so much as immediately failed not to do, it isn't even the third worst way she can think of to spend the evening. Moira is too tall, her lean limbs a little too long to reverse their positions now, which is _clearly_ what the freckled woman is after when a back arches and the other attempts to push up.

Settled where she is, straddling the other's slim hips and leaning over the taller woman in the limited light, Jack hasn't missed the way those mismatched eyes meet hers between heated kisses, the gaze as wanting as it is _furious_ at that fact. There's a distinct tinge of pink beneath those freckles, and it follows like strokes of watercolour paint to flush the column of that pale neck, down to the collar of a crisp black shirt, the front of which Jack has still-bruised knuckles wrapped in while she attempts to undo the knot in a fine silk tie. The fabric is teal, slips through her fingers more often than it doesn't, and she has _no idea_ how Moira tied the goddamn thing, but she wants it off and it's _infuriatingly stubborn_."

Her eyes are half-lid, glitteringly dark, and there are hands under her shirt when she trails a warm kiss, then another beneath the taller woman's jaw, feeling the breath shudder beneath her as she finally frees up that _fucking tie_ and simply tosses it into the surrounding darkness. Moira's fucking _hands are everywhere_.

" _Jacqueline_ ," the name cuts itself on the edge of teeth warningly, punctuated syllable by syllable in a way that's not quite anger, but is starting to border on dangerously worked up. They both are, she thinks. That voice is thrilling in the way she imagines it might be to touch a white shark through the bars of a dive cage, provided you didn't lose your fingers in the process.

_Provided you avoid the teeth_ , she clarifies to herself.

"Shut up," Is what she whispers back, nose brushing lightly to the other's. Their breath mingles warmly, more tremulous than it should be already. Her voice remains a quiet murmur just shy of the other's lips, never quite letting them touch as she observes with no small satisfaction, "You really aren't good at _not being in control_ , are you?"

This is the worst idea, she thinks, fingertips finding the first few buttons in Moira's shirt and unfastening them as swiftly as she can in the dark. But maybe also the best, at least when the other manages to shift enough to thread a lean thigh between hers, Moira's hand catching in her hair to pull her down. Their teeth click together once, before they don't. Whiskey and mint are becoming familiar. Almost as familiar as the teeth that press into her lower lip in their midst.

"When I get you out of this _fucking car_ ," the taller woman bites out in a husky timbre. It's the first time that she's heard the other swear that she can remember, and it cuts off sharply in what sounds like a _growl_ when she rocks her hips slowly against the other's by way of retort. There's something delightful about it. Moira is, after all, an _expert_ at getting under her skin. She's enjoying turning the tables on that. _Thoroughly_.

"That could take a while," she murmurs back against the hard angle of Moira's jaw, teasing the pale skin above the pulse point and then biting there very gently, little more than a soft nip. She hears a button strike the window of the car when she pulls the hem of the other's shirt free from a belt, realizing she must have missed one in her haste and not really caring that much. When her palms slide under the soft fabric of the other's shirt, up the ribs to press in lightly, everything she touches is warm. Rolling her hips again with excruciating slowness, she confides nearer Moira's ear this time, "But I guess that's up to you, isn't it?"

There's cussing in her own soon after, or at least she assumes. The words are rolling, a rough melody of thickly accented Gaeilge, guttural and heated in a way she loves. She may not understand the words, but the sentiment is _abundantly clear_ from context.

There's a part of her that knows. _Knows_. Knows absolutely and without a shadow of a doubt that there will be hell to pay for this sooner than later. She'd be lying if she wasn't nominally looking forward to it. But it's also been longer than either of them would have liked in the wake of their lazy afternoons and late night in Venice. Moira's office. They have a problem. And while the taller woman in control is excellent, well. This is pretty fucking excellent to.

She finds herself looking for ways to draw it out, raking her nails over pale skin to leave slow stripes of raised pink and red behind. It's a story that she's taking her time in telling, writes in the marks left behind on a lean back, the smudges of lipstick still visible against the marble column of the taller woman's neck. The slow way she rolls her hips into the other's, feeling the tension building in the lean frame beneath her hands, the way the toned musculature flexes and shifts. 

It all comes to a head when she fumbles with a belt buckle and her hand slips between them, sliding home beneath the waistband of those neatly pressed trousers to a responding sharp intake of breath, followed by a groan near her ear. There's no teasing then, her touch firm and purposeful as she guides the other where she needs to be right now - right over the fucking edge. Moira comes undone with a husky, low growl in her ear, and she can feel the other's fingertips pressed into her hips so hard that the nails are starting to bite into the skin when the tall frame beneath her tenses for a long moment and then slowly relaxes. 

Slowly, she withdraws the hand between them to rest it lightly to the taller woman's chest, the other one clutching the headrest of the seat near them as she listens to the other's ragged breathing, not quite in tandem with her own. The chest beneath her hand rises and falls hard for a time before it starts to steady. And when those eyes flash open once more, that unmatched gaze is blown-black, a ring of scarlet around one and sapphire the other, and all that Moira says, low and commanding is, " _Get out of the fucking car, Jacqueline._ "

It takes her a minute to disentangle from the other, a hand fumbling for the door handle to allow her to clamber out into the cooler air of the garage, the door thankfully down to enclose the space. It's a matter of seconds after that lanky frame follows after that there are hands on her, her shoulders hitting the side of the towncar so hard that the breath is almost driven from her in a rush, but she doesn't have time to think about that now. Because a hand has caught under her thigh to lift her up and hook it around a slim hip, and that tall frame is pressed so close to hers she can't focus on fucking anything else. 

Teeth find their way beneath her jaw, their pressure white-hot in a way that she certainly _shouldn't like_ but _god, does she_. Those _fucking hands_ definitely feel the way she shifts at that, and hold her down harder in return, only enabling the way the sharp edges of that cutting smile sink into her coppery skin again; they leave marks behind them that turn to warmth when the devil's mouth maps its own handiwork more tenderly afterwards.

When she's hoisted up, it looks for a moment that she may simply be carried into the house, but instead, Jack finds herself laid back on the hood of the car, the metal cool against her back and the lean frame over her decidedly _warm_. There's a frenetic energy to this, an urgency that hasn't been there quite the same before. Maybe in the lab. Maybe. Sharp nails scrape her hip, then curl against it to bite into the skin, even as a warmer hand slides dangerously lower along the other, then slips beneath the waistband. Those fingers curl too, but in a wantonly slow motion that strokes through her, and her head falls back, hair splayed on the hood of the car as an indecent sound emanates from her throat.

A sharp nip finds the exposed column of her neck for the effort, another soon pressed above it at the jaw, and then Moira draws up until they're looking at one another again, sharp features stark in the limited light and eyes devilishly bright. Vivid. Bloodied scarlet and twilight blue. There's breath gusting against her skin, and she knows hers is the same, though it cuts off in a low sound, her hands curling in Moira's fiery hair when that _fucking hand_ finds itself backed by a thigh and pushes forward, a middle and index finger sinking into her to the first knuckle.

"It isn't nice to tease me, Jacqueline," is what the devil whispers, like smoke into the shell of her ear, teeth scraping there pointedly thereafter. Then, her hands are grasping for better purchase anywhere she can find it - along the line of lean shoulders, the back of a neck, then finally curling into Moira's shirt between the shoulders until her knuckles go white - because the other has decided _not_ to tease her back and _she has to hold onto something_. That touch has pushed in until she feels the palm of the other's hand, and that's all the warning she has before everything is suddenly _hard_ and _fucking thorough_.

Before long, she's so close that it's almost painful, warmth pulsing low in her, around long fingers when they quite suddenly go smooth and slow once more, the transition so sudden that it in and of itself is a shock. There's something pre-emptively smug behind those angular features then, pleased, vivid in the scarlet blue of the devil's eyes. When Moira leans down nearer, what is whispered against the curve of her upper lip is a low, but authoritative, "Beg me."

That almost knocks the breath out of her all over again. She almost doesn't need to. That voice is almost enough. Almost.

It's written in those sharp features, in the way those mismatched eyes remain on hers, waiting. _Knowing_.

_Beg me._

God help her, she does.

\--- 

A shoulder leaned to the dark tile as warm water washes over her, Jack observes with a sort of vague fascination that her hands are still shaking a little. A trembling in her fingertips around a porcelain cup that Moira had brought her - in the shower, no less. She can't shake it, but the tea strangely helps. It's subtly sweet, warm, though she can't quite place the taste of it. She doesn't really drink tea. 

It shouldn't be all that surpising, she muses to herself at the little tremors that ripple the surface of the cloudy, dark liquid. Moira is _very good_ at what she does, and while she hadn't perhaps considered that might include fucking her within an inch of her life on the hood of a car after they had already failed to leave for a dinner they had already postponed three times, well. She was counting it as a decided positive.

The shower door slides open after a few minutes, the familiar form of Moira stepping in behind her. She wonders if it should be strange that they've honestly seen one another more in the shower now than they have in an actual restaurant. Not that she's complaining.

"Still?" comes a low, dangerously smooth voice from over her shoulder. The cup is taken out of her hand and set on a ledge in the shower, Moira's arms wrapping around her from behind, then long fingers lacing through hers and curling slightly as if to still their trembling as the other murmurs near her ear, "Perhaps I should have monitored your recovery a little more closely, rabbit."

"You did bring me a cup of tea, which was novel," Jack replies with a soft sound of amusement, shifting just enough to glance up at the other. "I don't think anyone has ever done that before. A beer, one time." There's a wicked curl to the corner of the other's lips, and she chides pre-emptively, an undercurrent of laughter to her voice, "Don't you even start talking shit about Junkertown right now. I can see it all over your face."

"I cannot even begin to fathom what causes you to think I would slander such an _illustrious and storied_ location as Junkertown, Jacqueline," Moira answers smoothly, but she can see the mischief behind those angular features. "Now were you planning on squandering all my hot water, or do you plan to _exit_ the shower sometime this evening?"

It's a fair point. Moira had already showered once, left, and now come back again for her. It's also a fair point that if the shower in her downtown apartment were this nice, she'd damn well live in it. Probably permanently.

Unlacing their fingers to turn, Jack rests her chin to Moira's sternum as she looks up, contemplating placing a kiss there and refraining for the time being, instead asking with a teasing note to her voice, "Anyone ever tell you you use three times more words than you need, O'Deorain?"

"Has anyone ever informed you that not only your grammar but also your utilization of the English language in general is atrocious, Jacqueline?" the taller woman responds a little too quickly, a smirk toying on those features in an infuriating way. 

"You're atrocious," Jack answers with a snort of amusement, tipping a look at the showerhead as she observes, "And your skinny ginger ass is blocking all my hot water." She adds further, the corner of her mouth curling when it elicits a low chuckle from the other, "Besides. You're an Oasis Minister. You don't need all of it. Who knows when the lowly mechanic will have a hot shower again."

"You are welcome to come down to the lab for that any time you like," comes the response, a low and dangerously smooth lilt to it that makes her look up, meet mismatched eyes and see the smirk curling over those subtly freckled features. 

Jack clicks her tongue at that, confessing with vast amusement, "You know, I'm not sure your interns would like that half as much as I would."

There's a low chuckle as the taller woman looks down, inquiring simply, "I had considered ordering Japanese since our plans were...adjusted last minute. Will you be staying the evening?"

It's more than a question. It's also a concession, an invitation. _Remain in my space while we have the time._

She's staying.


	15. you've got your armor, i see your flaws

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ** Aro is Jack's version of a portable Alexa  
> ** Ill-advised decisions to talk about their the exs, torture mention  
> ** Super powers  
> ** Mary Shelley quotes because they're nerds  
> ** This took forever to get down the right way

They do everything backwards, she thinks, curled up on the couch in Moira's Oasis home. It provides a distinct departure from the aesthetic of the Rialto apartment. A stone building with a brilliantly turquoise door that was braced in a whorl of leaf-like metal had led down the hallway, into the living room where they are. It's a contrast of rich, red-brown walls painted over in vivid copper leaf in geometric patterns, some of the metal still bearing brassy hues, while others have taken on a patina of verdigris in green and grey. 

The honeyed hardwood floor bears a few decorative rugs, all of which look expensive, and from the sectioned glass window - its bracing in the shape of stars, she can see out into the shrouded twilight of what looks like a garden. The colours compliment each other better than she thinks they probably should, and the couch, soft and grey, has cushions that are overstuffed in a way that make it more comfortable than her actual bed back in her flat. 

Maybe it's the lack of cologne or the liquid soap in the shower, but Moira smells a little like spruce trees and rain to her right now, a fact drawn all the more to prominence by their current nearness. The geneticist is warm at her side, an arm around her shoulder, and her cheek rests comfortably nestled to the curve of the other's shoulder in turn, against the soft cloth of a heather grey t-shirt as they watch a movie that the other selected. It's ridiculously comfortable. 

She had no idea what half of the items that the taller woman ordered were, but her questions when they arrived were patiently answered, and with a few pointed questions about food allergies prior, they had shared a pleasant evening meal before settling in here. 

In the dim light, beneath an expansive ceiling that arches overhead for some distance, she finds that the freckles on Moira's countenance seem all the more prominent, and finds herself paying more attention to them than to the film on the vidscreen, tracking their trajectory as if they were constellations in the night sky. 

Mismatched eyes shift in her direction after a time, a faint smile of bemusement on the other's features as Moira observes in languidly smooth cadence, "You're staring, rabbit."

She uses a straw to take a sip from the sweetly lavender beverage in her hand - taro milk tea - before clearing her throat softly to confide, "Do something about it."

One of those perfect brows arches at that, a flicker of mirth in scarlet and blue eyes, and she responds by gliding the tip of her finger over Moira's cheekbone before withdrawing it to affirm, "Junker to English translation: I'm admiring your freckles. Does that bother you?"

A smirk curls over the corner of those lips now, that voice yet smooth as Moira confirms for her, "No." Then, with what sounds the hint of a chuckle, "You are amusing."

"You're dangerously attractive when you're being smug," Jack confides in turn, leaning up to place a kiss to the other's cheek before nestling back where she'd been. With another sip of her beverage, she points it at the vidscreen to ask, "What is this again?"

There isn't an immediate answer, as instead warm fingers curl over hers on the plastic cup, pulling it over toward the taller woman so that she can steal a sip. This accomplished, Moira does not relinquish either her hand or the container, instead replying with a yet smug expression, "Taro. It's a tuber vegetable most commonly used in south asian cuisine."

Jack snorts softly at that, dark eyes flicking up toward the other's features as she confides, "Thanks, _Aro_. It tastes like marshmallow."

"It does not," comes a response from the taller woman, a little laugh of incredulity following. "Vanilla at best."

"Like a charred campfire marshmallow, with the good crackly bits on the outside," Jack muses further at the other's denial and perhaps at the fact that her hand is still captured between Moira's and her chosen beverage. "Those are the best kind."

"You are absolutely delusional," Moira retorts with a smooth chuckle, her angular countenance catching the dim illumination to cast sharp shadows across it for a moment. Bending her head to take another slow drink of the beverage in question, the taller woman points out thereafter, "On both counts, I lament to inform you."

"Well, dinner is ruined now. I hope you're happy," the Junker draws out dramatically at the statement, a grin curling over her features as she does so. There's wind in the palm trees outside, and it echoes hauntingly over the windows. Then, with a pointed look at her captive hand and drink alike, " _And that's mine_."

She watches as that smirk curls almost impossibly further, nothing short of devilish as those eyes catch the light, cast sidelong at her as Moira confides in a lilting voice, as if altogether too pleased with herself, "Finder's keepers, Jacqueline."

Her head tilting back in a genuine laugh and a glitter of mischief in her dark eyes, Jack observes with true delight at the turnabout, sliding her hand from beneath the other's to free it, "How _fucking dare you_ throw Junker law at me, Moira O'Deorain." Dark hair falling over her shoulder as she leans over, eyes half-lid, she brushes a warm kiss beneath the sharp line of the taller woman's jaw and asks there amusedly, "Do you think finder's keepers applies to people?"

"What makes you think, rabbit," the taller woman turns, confides so closely that they're both breathing the same air, exhaling warmly together. A lavender-tinted hand lifts, tucking an errant tress behind her ear as those mismatched eyes dip toward her lips and then back up to meet her gaze, "That you aren't mine already?"

It's what she says, but also _how she says it_. Certain. Possessive. Low with the promise of something else.

Jack's night-dark eyes search a field of ocean and blood, making contact for the second time with that darkness she's seen flit behind them. She won't lie, she settles into Junkertown bold, which lives beneath most things, like scratching the rust off of hard metal. Relinquishing her hold on the cup to leave it in Moira's hand, she shifts up instead, onto her knees so that she's looking down at those angular features instead of up at them. When her arms drape around the taller woman's shoulders, she simply watches Moira for a long moment, keeping their features close - and the softest challenge burns behind her words like smoke before a flame, "How do you figure?"

It shifts almost immediately. She had expected it to. Moira reads something in her gaze with a low sound of amusement at what's presented to her, as if pleased by what she sees there or hears in Jack's voice. The taro beverage slid onto the table and summarily forgotten, the taller woman turns the tables with a calculated precision, pressing forward - pressing Jack back onto the couch, which is still soft but not as distracting as the heat of the lanky form that sprawls over hers like a great jungle cat's. Dangerous. She can't not watch, but puts up no resistance. Not yet, anyways, and instead slips her fingertips beneath the hem of the taller woman's shirt and scrapes her nails there lightly. Waits. 

Moira's hair is a corona of fire, lit from behind to strike gold about the edges, and those angular features are sharp in an interplay of illumination and darkness in a way that she _likes_. For a moment, they remind her of wild animals circling one another around the embers of a lowly-burning fire, trying to determine which of them is the predator and which is the prey. She suspects both, feels like a fox staring down a red dirt road at a dingo, waiting to see if it settles or shows teeth. 

"Outside the lab. On the balcony in Rialto. In the car," that low voice is dangerously smooth against the shell of her ear, as if all its silken tone were wrapped around piano wire, a makeshift garrote. It transitions into a husky whisper that makes her pulse jump beneath the skin, betraying her and making her unsettlingly certain of the role that she plays in their arrangement, "How nicely you _beg_ for me."

Watching Moira through dark lashes, Jack _knows that she knows_. Knows just how thoroughly and wire-tight the taller woman could wrap her around one of those long fingers if she tried hard enough. Knows how uncomfortably attractive she finds this devilish persona, the one that's gentle and rough all at once, cocky as fuck. 

"Why don't you say it for me, rabbit?" comes a whisper against her lips, coaxing in a way that's wholly unfair in that rolling accent. Their breath is mingling now and she knows that hers is coming harder than it should. They really have to stop doing this. "We are both well aware of the state of you. And it would be to my liking."

God, she wants to say it. There's a pleasant warmth everywhere they're touching, and an unpleasant heat creeping up her neck to colour the coppery skin there a subtle rose. But a part of her won't let her just yet, so instead she makes a soft sound in her chest, one beat of amusement as her lip curls back into what could be perceived as a smile or more likely, the revealing of teeth. Her chin tilts up further, the bridge of her nose skimming a freckled one as she whispers back Junkertown bold, "Fuck you."

"Is that the game you wish to play?" comes a murmur in response, scarlet and blue eyes watching her with vast satisfaction through coppery lashes. A cold, lavender-tinted hand comes to rest beneath her jaw, curves around her throat. Not applying pressure, just getting her attention. Toying with her. Playing. Moira is enjoying this. There's a low chuckle that reverberates in the other's chest, and she feels it where they touch.

"That depends, am I going to win?" Jack asks back, dark eyes settled to scarlet and blue. There's a sensation near the line of her jaw, something thin and sharp that draws up with enough pressure to make her jump but not enough to break the skin. One of those taloned nails, she suspects.

"No. But you may find that you enjoy losing," there's a cutting edge to that voice, like shards of glass beneath smoke, potent with the memory of fire. There's a low, smoky chuckle that follows, the devil's eyes searching hers as if reading what they find there. "That's what I like about you, rabbit. You don't look away. Even when you should."

When that nail presses in harder, Jack emits a low sound, tilting her chin up with it - or at least as much as she's able to with a hand yet curled around her throat. "You aren't the first dangerous thing I've taken to bed, precious," she answers smoothly, flicking a glance toward the curve of Moira's lips, then back toward that perilous gaze. "Just the most. Maybe I don't want you to look away, either."

"Who did?" the words fall from the devil's lips and crack through every layer of armor she has, splintering it like ice. Head turning, she looks away then, because it's sufficient to knock her from bold to vulnerable in an instant, and she doesn't like that. Doesn't like what it dredges up all of a sudden from between the cracks. _I don't want to think about her while I'm with you,_ is what she thinks. She doesn't say it.

So she remains silent.

"What's this, rabbit?" there's a shift in Moira's voice, a clinical note to its low and lilting timbre that undercuts something she can't quite place. As if it were gently probing the jagged edges that it created, to see what it had just uncovered. How deep the wound goes. It's fucking deep. Raw in a way that she didn't think it still was. She knows it shows on her face when she looks back toward the other. 

"You have a thing for finding scars," she answers softly, an unpleasantness settling into her bones like the memory of smoke and fire, burning metal in the dark. Her lashes flutter when Moira leans in to place a light kiss to the nick in her upper lip, and her breath shudders that has nothing to do with the gentle touch. When her chocolate-dark eyes slip back open, they hold scarlet-and-blue for a time in further silence.

"You look like an animal with its paw caught in a trap," the taller woman confides, freckles prominent from this close, mismatched eyes searching.

Jack lifts her hand, a knuckle tracing the line of that angular jaw as she as she flicks a look in the direction of the hand around her throat. Her voice is smooth and low as she asks, "Is that not what this is?"

She hates the way those eyes are looking at her now, reading all the imperfections under the surface. Searching beneath the red dust like a scavver hunts for scrap in the shadows of old things. She tries to ignore it. Feeling picked over like the ruins outside Junkertown, her cold metal exposed and weathered.

"You know it isn't," comes a low response, matter-of-fact, and while that hand at her throat does not relinquish its hold, a thumb brushes gently against the skin, cool against the warmth there. "I wouldn't hurt you, rabbit. Not badly."

There's a bitterness to her words now, the other's statement twisting in her like razor wire to pull up blood. She answers softly, so softly, caught in a darkness she thought she left behind in Australia, trying not to let the rough and rusted edges peek through, "You can't promise me that."

"Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change. The sun might shine, or the clouds might lour: but nothing could appear to me as it had done the day before," Moira whispers back, that cadence smooth as silk in its recitation. That hurts. God, that one hurts. A flinch touches her coppery features, and she knows the rough edges are poking through now, showing on her face in a way she wishes they weren't.

She knows her eyes are glassy, feels the tightness in her throat as old demons threaten to drag her under. The lines come easily to her, a book read and re-read in the trailer outside Junkertown until the pages were tattered and yellow. Licking her lips as if moistening them would help in any sense, she confides back, "How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow."

There's a kiss, then. It's gentle in the strangest way. Impossibly so. In direct opposition to the way they have been with each other. It promises to pick up the pieces carefully, hold them even if they might cut. When she reciprocates it, slowly, the hesitance in her slowly melting away, it deepens, evolves into a warm and languid thing that lingers between them. A push and pull, like the tides on the shore, soft. Seafoam and sand. The hand at her jaw is gentle, brushes lightly where it touches, and withdraws. And when they draw back, it's in between no scarce few softer, lighter kisses that she has no idea what to do with but chases after anyways. Moira shifts them somewhat after that, until her back is to the cushions at the back of the couch, and the taller woman is curled around her, not quite protectively...but not quite not, either. 

What falls from those lips next is another line she remembers, made all the more poignant for that low lilt that accents all of Moira's words, "Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beauties of nature. The starry sky, the sea, and every sight afforded by these wonderful regions, seems still to have the power of elevating his soul from earth. Such a man has a double existence: he may suffer misery, and be overwhelmed by disappointments; yet, when he has retired into himself, he will be like a celestial spirit that has a halo around him, within whose circle no grief or folly ventures."

She watches Moira for a time after that, the scarlet and blue, the way those long fingers slip through the ends of her hair, brushing through it. _How do you exist_ , she wonders briefly. _Anomalous parts, beautiful monster, whispering Mary Shelley to me in the dim light._ It's a concession when she speaks it, an offer, a trade of hidden thing kept well below the surface, "I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

The edges are cracking a little more. Maybe scars aren't the place to start, but if it was a wound, Moira's hand was already in it anyways, those long fingers bloodied by something she may as well understand if they're going to keep at this. There's a slight nod, vivid eyes of scarlet and blue that search hers from behind coppery lashes, "An answer for an answer, rabbit."

"Her name is Jaeden Cooper," Jack answers back, feeling the name like blood on her teeth, tasting phantom copper. She finds her hands wandering, thumbs stroking up the line of Moira's angular jaw and relishes the way those mismatched eyes fall half-lid at the touch, if only for a moment. "The Junker Queen. I was sixteen and she was seventeen when we started running around together."

"On again off again until about three years ago. It feels like yesterday sometimes," Jack confides in a feather-soft voice, repeating the action from before and watching coppery lashes flutter once again. "I crashed my hoverbike into the side of their doghouse. That's how we met."

A soft sound that might be amusement, those mismatched eyes watching her like Moira is reading a book in what she sees on Jack's features.

"She came tearing out of the garage and punched me in the eye. Thought I'd hit her _dog_. He was asleep under the porch," Jack confesses further, slipping her arms around the taller woman's shoulders and tracing her fingertips there instead. "Lifted me clean off my feet and held me off the ground. I, naturally, hit her back. Took the cheeky thing coming out from under the porch to settle the scrap."

"I was holding a bag of ice to my eye in her kitchen that afternoon when she up and kissed me. Said I was cute for such a shit hoverbiker," Jack muses, nestling her cheek to Moira's, dark eyes contemplating the way the ends of the other's hair glitter in the light like red gold when she runs through it with her fingertips. "My willpower around tall and intimidating has never been that admirable. We ended up making it to second base in her room, and I fell out her window when her parents got home."

"Imagine my surprise," comes a gentle enough timbre near her ear, though mirth cuts beneath it, "At learning that."

"Shut up," Jack whispers back, though it's not unkind, a little sound of mirth escaping her nonetheless. "She showed up at my house a couple of days later. I was working on the Jackrabbit at the time. Found out she liked mechas too. I helped her build Sovereign, her arena mech."

Moira's hair is soft, and she notes that it smells like the spruce and resin of the soap in the shower still. It's a little soothing, if she's being honest, takes some measure of attention away from what's racing through her mind. 

"We had all these wild ideas about how we could change things. Fortify the walls. Drive the raiders and the scavvers out. Get the others to work together - the scrappers, the farmers, the ex-Libs. Then she started actually doing it," Jack confides, wondering how things went this way. How they went from watching a movie to rooting around with bloody hands in the dull ache behind her chest. "Rattled the teeth of those that weren't listening until they did. She took it seriously. Won. Killed the King, took his throne, and started _making it happen_."

"You love her," the observation is simply that, smooth and lilting, but carrying no judgment. It's jarring to her how it doesn't. It's been a long time since anyone had noticed and hadn't actively _made it worse_.

"A part of me does," Jack admits in turn, dark eyes holding scarlet-and-blue. She hates that it's true, but it is. A part of her will always be younger and in love with a wild girl with blue hair and a wolfish, cutting smile. "We were...hell. We were together a _long time_. You can't always get the roots out once you allow them to grow."

"Would you reconcile if you could?" comes the inquiry after, and that hurts too. Lilting and matter-of-fact, Moira is like a scalpel cutting back all the bone structure she'd hide behind. There's a kiss pressed to her sternum through the soft cotton of her shirt, an exhalation of breath there in its aftermath. Warmth blooms in its wake, but she can feel what rests beneath the question.

It's like seeing a window that you forgot that you left open when she considers it, seeing the shattered pain of glass. Knowing that she'd cut herself if she crawled through. Watching Moira watching her decide if she would.

"No," the answer is offered with more certainty than she thought there'd be. It's like a weight lifting in some regards, a stress that bleeds out of her bones as she rests her cheek atop the other's head. "There are times when I wished it could be that easy. More often I just wish we could stand to be around one another again at all. Be friends. Just _talk_. But I wouldn't be _with her_ again. Not like that. I don't miss how that made me feel."

She's silent for several seconds after that, distant as she remembers standing on rust-pitted metal at the foot of the Queen's throne. The look in those hazel eyes as they watched her, tracking every movement. Angry back, their voices ringing out through the Scrapyard as everything fell apart.

"How was that?" the prompt is gentle once she doesn't speak again, a knuckle brushing along her jawline.

"Lonely," Jack answers back, dark eyes searching scarlet and blue in turn. She still feels it, clawing at her like a familiar darkness. Pulling her back to that day. A shudder ripples down her spine before she can mask it, and it has less to do with the admission and more with the way the memories start to bleed through. Dusty metal and rust, the taste of blood on the backs of her teeth. How that blood smelled when it dripped down...down, onto hot metal, burning in the dark. 

Nestling closer almost unconsciously, she confides quietly, "You remember the vid I showed you? The fission grenades?"

Moira compensates for it, for the sudden nearness, the need for closeness, accepts it with a warm hand that slips beneath the hem of her shirt to stroke its fingertips idly along the curve of her side. In a low timbre, the other answers simply, "I do."

Resting her brow to Moira's, something about their nearness oddly soothing, Jack intones in all but a whisper, "After they went off and the drones went down, I jettisoned out of my mech. I had radiation burns on my arm. I couldn't see from the flash. It wouldn't power back up." A slow exhalation escapes her, "I would say optimistically it took them about fifteen minutes to figure out who I was."

Her heart is beating a little harder. She hates it. Feels a phantom ache in her fingertips, a sound like branches being broken, "Downside of the Queen being soft on you. Omnics are liable to stick a knife in and twist it around to see what she'll do about it. I learned right quick that you can take one hell of a beating with one of those med units patching you up in between."

Those arms curve around her, drawing her closer. The firm pressure of it helps. She swipes her tongue over her teeth, tasting only taro, no blood this time, "The solar wire marks on my shoulder. They hooked it up to a panel. Broke my fingers a few times. I remember that much. Not much else except listening to them try to negotiate terms. Think they sent her a few vids. I knew she wouldn't. Fancied myself pretty tough at the time. I didn't give them much."

"Jamie says," Jack muses softly, a thoughtful sound made in the back of her throat, "That I was in some ratty little bunker near the omnium, and that he and Roadie snatched me out once they caught wind. Which probably means they blew the absolute fuck out of it." 

She has a dim recollection of cacophonous sound, falling stone, someone - not her - screaming from trapped beneath the rubble, "I do remember sitting on a cot at Wolf's later, drinking moonshine because we were out of painkillers an wondering where she was. Jae. Not realizing yet that she wasn't coming."

"She couldn't even look at me," Jack breathes, dark eyes searching scarlet-and-blue and finding some semblance of comfort there. "At first I thought it was wounded pride. Jamie came and got me. She hates Jamie. Junkrat. He blew up her house a few times. Only like three." Her own eyes close then, and she can almost hear it still, feels her lip curl faintly at the memory, "I was a liability, she said. A weak spot in her armor that was exposed. She couldn't afford to have those anymore. So she carved me out to save herself the trouble, and that was the end of it."

Warm fingertips catch her by the chin, that voice dangerously smooth, the voice low and lilting as it instructs, "Open your eyes, Jacqueline."

Her lip curls faintly further at that, revealing a slip of teeth in an expression she's certain isn't welcoming, but she complies with the directive when it's uttered, her dark eyes bearing a wealth of emotion when they open once more to meet scarlet and blue. Quietly, she asks, "What are you doing?"

Those features are calm and even, tip nearer hers to place a light kiss to the scar at her lip once more. A reminder, perhaps? A reassurance. 

"Not looking away."

In that moment, she has to fight down a whole tangled mess of reasons that her eyes feel too warm, the corners of them prickling with moisture, but she doesn't withdraw when slender hands draw her forward, the thumbs stroking up and over her cheekbones to chase the dampness there away. She's frightfully still instead, dark lashes fluttering closed, when a feather-light kiss is placed first to one eyelid and then the other, before a final one is placed between her brows.

"Would you care for a drink, Jacqueline?" comes that voice, smooth and oddly gentle, chased by the lilting accent that touches everything that Moira says. 

"Yeah. Yeah, I would," Jack admits, exhaling a slow breath that she didn't know she was holding. When Moira moves to stand, she shifts up on the couch to sit on the end near where they were, leaning comfortably to the arm of the sofa as she gathers herself back up again, shores up the sheet metal and red earth that's like armor. There's a hole in it now, she recognizes, the shape of a tall, slender woman who is currently walking toward the door in pursuit of libations. She'd let her back in. 

Moira doesn't go far, only into the next room over to select a bottle from the bar, two glasses, and then returning. Pouring a generous amount of amber liquid into each vessel with a practiced hand, the taller woman passes one over and then settles back onto the couch, nestled beside her with one arm draped around her shoulders.

As she takes a swallow of whiskey, she feels the warmth spread through her chest, similar to the warmth of the lean frame resting beside her. Her head comes to rest on a lean shoulder, and she looks up to quip drily, "Third date, make a girl cry and then talk about that one time she was low key tortured?"

The response isn't what she expects, unnervingly calm, "I want you to consent to a thorough physical exam. I can attend to it in my lab later this week, or schedule you with a reputable physician in Oasis if you are not comfortable with my attending to it." Moira takes a sip of whiskey, then holds her gaze to assert, "And no, pre-emptively, I am not being fresh. If you drank moonshine as a painkiller, I presume you did not seek proper medical attention."

Night-dark eyes blink once, flick up toward the taller woman's scarlet and blue, reading a whole mess of valid concerns there. She opens her mouth as if to protest the notion, then simply breathes out slowly, feeling her willpower fold like a deck of cards beneath the weight of that gaze, and concedes, "Alright."

Silence stretches between them for a moment, and she nurses her whiskey before simply resting her chin on Moira's shoulder, the question coming more easily than it should in the wake of their previous discussion, "What about you? Worst break-up?"

"Angela Ziegler," comes a low response, marked as it is by the slight tightening at the corners of those mismatched eyes as they narrow faintly. Reaching for the bottle, Moira refills her glass and then tops off her own before speaking once more, "We were lab partners under a previous employer - the keenest of scientific minds consolidated into one space, not dissimilar to what one may find in the Oasis Ministries."

Those freckled features are thoughtful now, and Jack is patient, waits as Moira waited for her, as the other speaks, "We made _scientific marvels_ , Jacqueline. Broke new ground in a dozen ways, rewrote the fundamental building blocks of the human genome. It was brilliant. _We_ were brilliant."

"It was easy to love her," the taller woman muses idly, a flicker of emotion cutting like a knife over those sharp features. "Everyone did, after all. As equally as they disliked me for my nature. Even she did, for a time." Another sip of whiskey, "We made a debate of everything, from how coffee was made in the office to the methodology of our experiments. It was all an argument, until the exact moment it was not."

A slip in composure, the phantom of nostalgia witnessed there chased by old pain, occurs before Moira covers it my taking another smooth sip of whiskey and mulls over how best to proceed. 

"I utilized the foundations of her research on nanites in my work," the taller woman confides, glancing down to meet Jack's gaze as she speaks. Content to listen, the Junker merely tips her head slightly, night-dark eyes remaining set to scarlet and blue. "I improved upon it, broadening their applications. While I did not attempt to hide what I was doing from her, she viewed the improvements as a breach of trust, even when human trials proved successful."

There's a glint in those mismatched eyes when Moira clarifies, "Human trials were forbidden by our employer. Small minds. I found a way. She reported me to the ethics board and our superiors when she discovered it. When my employment was terminated, I was blacklisted amongst other research groups." There's a low, displeased sound before the taller woman takes another swallow of liquor, "Oasis is one of few locations that would consider my employment without severe restriction and oversight."

"She wept in my office while I packed my things. I was not kind. I sometimes consider if things may have ended differently if I had been," a sigh escapes Moira after that, those mismatched eyes a little distant before she admits after another sip, "I realize now that she likely saw me as another broken thing for her to fix. Angela was always a champion for lost causes. I do not know that I would have enjoyed being another one." Another beat of silence, then honesty, "I may have, once."

Silence stretches on between them a time, until Jack starts in as gentle a cadence she can offer, "You mentioned human trials. Was it..."

There's the lifting of that lavender-tinted hand betwixt above her, its taloned nails glittering in the light, the nod of a red-crowned head. It's enough of an answer. When her fingers twine around cooler ones, she remembers distinctly how she mapped it out by touch at her workstation in the machine shop, and settles her glass upon the table to take Moira's hand in both of hers instead, tempted to do it again. There's a moment in which she almost thinks better of her next question, but instead prompts softly, "What were you trying to accomplish?"

When Moira's eyes meet hers, there's pride in them now, something else. Anticipation. A devilish glint. God, she's pleased, Jack realizes, watching the dark thing behind those eyes reappear for an instant, then dissipate like so much smoke. A low, lilting voice drawls out, "Would you like me to show you, rabbit?"

She draws that cold hand down toward her further, craning up slightly to press a kiss to a lavender knuckle, then relaxes back where she was, dark hair splayed over the taller woman's lap as she looks up, "Show me."

A low, pleased sound escapes Moira at the concession, or perhaps the kiss, and she likes how it sounds. A warning follows swiftly after, spoken in a voice that is of a sudden, dangerously smooth, like a riptide beneath the glassy surface of the ocean, "This will hurt. If only for a moment. Though it is easily remedied."

She blinks once in response, head subtly atilt before she lifts her chin slightly in acknowledgement. She doesn't understand. She isn't sure she needs to. But she also doesn't protest when Moira takes hold of her wrist in that lavender-tinted hand, wrapping long fingers around it until they curl around it entirely. That in and of itself does not surprise her, at least not until subtle wisps of purple-black energy start to flicker around the other woman's hands and the dark veins become more prominent in it, spidering beneath the skin. 

Gooseflesh breaks out over hear arm first, then climbs up to her shoulders to race down her back, the hair at the nape of her neck standing on end as she looks the devil in the eyes, if only for a second, then glances back toward her wrist in that suddenly ice-cold hand. Her forearm is chilled to the bone, deathly cold as a dull ache spreads seemingly to the bone, and she watches in a mild fascination mingled with horror as a mottled array of richly blue and bloodied purple bruises come to fruition beneath her coppery skin. 

Stricken speechless as she watches this occur, she can do little else but stare for a time, dark eyes flicking once toward Moira's and then back to her heavily bruised limb. The dull throbbing in the muscle and bone does not cease beneath the building bruises, though eventually, Moira's hand shifts slightly, not releasing her entirely but ceasing...whatever the other has been doing, enough for her to witness the perfect outline it left behind - the silhouette of a hand formed in the near-black blood that's pooling underneath her skin.

" _No fucking shit_ ," is all Jack can manage to say, though it cuts off in a hiss when she tries to move her fingers and a white-hot bolt of agony lances up her arm in response. The hand around her wrist tightens once more, but no more damage forms, and it seems for the moment that Moira is simply intent on holding it still to _prevent_ any injury.

With a note of fascination in that whiskey and smoke voice, Moira observes her own handiwork as she confirms, "The nanites cause advanced cellular deterioration. I have a device that harnesses its potential to a fatal degree, though it's used primarily for field combat."

There's a moment in which the taller woman ducks to place a kiss to her blackening knuckles, tender, sweet. She can't feel it, and her heart is pounding so fast now. So fucking fast. But then, the warmer hand curls around her wrist in turn, and in slow increments, she feels warmth return to her limb, watches with nothing short of utter fascination as the bruises fade into the background, the ache fades, until it was as if nothing had ever occurred.

She's brilliant, Jack thinks. Absolutely fucking mad, but brilliant. 

In a pleased timbre, Moira observes, "One hand gives, the other takes away."

Flexing her hand experimentally once the last of the mottled colour to it has scattered, Jack finds nothing out of place. Moira leans forward, chin resting to her shoulder as the other simply watches her rub her fingertips together to test for sensation. Not bothering to comment on the guarded look on the other's features that flees with her words, replaced instead by a pleased one, Jack presses a kiss to a freckled cheek and confides there, "That's _fucking brilliant_."

Glancing back toward her hand as she settles back into Moira, the taller woman's arms coming to rest loosely around her, Jack asks, "What else can you do, gorgeous? Turn into a cat? Read minds? Fly?"

There's a husky chuckle near her ear at that, one that she feels the vibration of against her shoulders from how they're sitting now.

Cold fingers find her chin, turning her head toward Moira as the taller woman leans in to bestow a kiss that is _less than chaste_ upon her. It leaves her with the taste of whiskey, her dark eyes glancing up through darker lashes as a freckled nose brushes to hers. That low, husky whisper is wicked when Moira confides, "Well. I discovered just this evening, Jacqueline, that I can reduce a Junker to _begging_. Do you believe that counts?"

"God," Jack retorts, and it's easy again. Humor and teasing, that smug fucking smile. She loves it. "You're such a smug asshole. That's the last time I ask you for anything."

There's a sharp nip to her lip, a maddening certainty in the lilting voice that follows it, as if it were merely a statement of immutable fact, "You like it."

A snort of amusement escapes her despite herself, Jack placing a quick kiss to the corner of the taller woman's mouth before correcting, "I like _you_."

Those freckled features bear a smirk now. Cocky as fuck, Jack muses to herself, unable to remove the amused smile curling the corner of her own. Moira isn't wrong. She does like it. A little too much, she thinks. 

"I can deconstruct my physical form at the cellular level and reconstitute it somewhere else," Moira doesn't sound any less smug, somehow manages to look more so. It's written in the slight arch to a perfect brow, the way the corner of that smirk pulls slightly, evident even this close. "It appears similar to a miasma of black mist."

"Bullshit," Jack retorts with amused authority, though eyes her skeptically for a second before asking, unconvinced, "Like Nightcrawler in the old comics? You're real funny."

"Like Nightcrawler."

"Bullshit," she repeats with a snort of amusement. Then, at noting that the vid is still playing on the screen, something with a boar and a wolf. "What was this anyway?"

"Princess Mononoke," Moira answers with a glance up at the vidscreen as well. With seemingly earnest curiosity, the other asks then, "Do you have a favorite vid, Jacqueline?"

She thinks about it for a minute, coppery features blanking entirely until she hones in on the one. With a sidelong glance at Moira, she confides, "An older one. Before there were actual mechas. You ever see Pacific Rim?"

"I have not."

"Basically, these things called kaiju - giant monsters..."

"I know what kaiju are," Moira answers lowly then, a hint of amusement to that lilting accent. That surprises her. 

Jack snorts softly in return, a smile curling over her lips unbidden as she observes the shift in that freckled expression, "Kaiju come out of the ocean through a portal and a mobile mecha force fights them. Sort of like MEKA and the gwishin. It's what got me into mecha as a kid. I wanted to fight kaiju. Like an asshole."

She's thinking about another vid entirely when scarlet and blue eyes lock with her own, chasing what they see there to press, "Now what is _that look for_?"

"Nothing."

"No?" comes an all-too-curious query that tells her the game is already up, a slip of teeth revealed in a cunning smile as Moira holds her gaze. "I can be _very_ persuasive, rabbit. Though I believe we have already covered that once this evening." 

"Let a girl have secrets. God," she concedes, a mischievous grin touching her features in turn, though she doesn't respond further than that. 

With a low sound of amusement, as if finding vast humor in something, Moira responds smoothly, "I'm glad we have established that safeword territory and deeply personal matters are _fine_ but childhood vid preference is too much. How enlightening."

"This is different," Jack confesses, though her grin becomes increasingly mischievous as she observes those freckled features. She's going to spill. She knows it already. Dark eyes glittering, she places a light peck to the end of that freckled nose and confides, "I'm not sure if I want to tell you what it was, because you'll hold it over my head forever. I'm not sure you should have that much power, O'Deorain. It's a lot of responsibility."

"What happened to an answer for an answer?" the taller woman presses with a vague amusement.

Clicking her tongue lightly at Moira, the corner of her smile twitching up further, Jack counters, "I did give you an answer, didn't I?" She makes a show of mulling it over, then holds up two fingers to parlay further, "I'll give you an _embarrassing secret_ for...mm. Two kisses sounds fair, doesn't it?"

As if truly measuring the weight of the alternative offer, Moira holds her gaze, the faintest hint of a smirk toying at the corner of the other's lips. Arms coming to curve more closely around her, the taller woman inquires as if in necessary clarification, "Up front?"

Flicking a slow look over those freckled features, Jack observes in a pointed drawl, "That's a bit forward, don't you think?"

An incredulous sound escapes Moira before those arms slip back from around her, one hand simply shoving her over onto the couch. A low laugh escapes Jack at the action. She's still laughing when Moira observes with a roll of mismatched eyes and subsequent sip of whiskey, "You're _incorrigible_."

Kicking back where she rests, her dark eyes mischievous as she watches the other woman, Jack retorts with amusement, "Yeah, up front." Then, with a more forthright grin, her cadence teasing, "How else do I know you'll hold up to your half of the bargain."

There's a thoughtful sound as Moira seems to mull over the matter with _far more seriousness_ than it warrants, then tips back the remainder of a glass of whiskey in one swallow, the emptied glass set upon the coffee table with a soft 'clink'. Shifting to once more sprawl over her on the couch, propped up on elbows once more, Moira with little room for further negotiate, "I will concede to one prior and one after the desired information, _unless_ I have reason to doubt your sincerity."

Her dark eyes flutter closed when Moira ducks in, only to open once more as she laughs thereafter at the soft, chaste kiss that was placed to the small scar to her upper lip. She accuses amusedly, "That isn't what I meant at all."

"Clarification is key, rabbit," the taller woman confides amusedly, her breath warm against Jack's cheek and the corner of her lips curled into an infuriating smirk. "It is hardly my fault that you do not know how to bargain." Then with a devilish amusement, "I _could_ make the second more to your _intent_ than the letter of our arrangement, but I will want something in return."

Her dark eyes settle to the other's unmatched, and Jack mulls the idea over for a time before conceding, "State your terms."

" _Someone's_ desperate," Moira murmurs amusedly in response.

Her leg slips between Moira's at that, shin locking the other's calf even as she presses up into the taller woman's shoulder. Shifting only enough to catch her attention, albeit with a laugh, Jack pivots enough to show that she _could if she wanted to_ before intoning with more than a share of laughter, "I will _absolutely_ dump your cocky ass on the floor."

It earns her a low chuckle and vague look of surprise, Moira tracing a fingertip lightly over the scar at her lip with a fingertip as if there were no threat of being removed from the couch. "Very well," the taller woman observes, "You mentioned once that this was incurred while fighting. I want to know how. In detail, lest you see fit to try to use my own _vastly superior_ tactics against me."

"God, you're insufferable, you know that?" Jack retorts, though relaxes back onto the couch nonetheless.

That lean frame shifts up on its elbows a bit more, Moira's countenance wholly sly as the other asks in a voice smooth as silk, "And?"

"Fine," Jack concedes with a look toward the table, exhaling in what she supposes is a put-out enough sigh as she nods toward her comm. "Use your _vastly superior_ arms to grab my comm. There's a picture." When it's passed to her, she eyes Moira for a moment before observing, "I'm going to regret this."

Having to loop her arms around Moira's shoulders to look at the comm over one of them, it takes her a few seconds to pull up the picture that she's searching for - one of her and Jaeden from...Lord, they must have been eighteen and nineteen? Jaeden always looks the same. Blue hair. Mohawk. Red paint over the eyes. Shit-eating grin. Jack, on the other hand, has short-cropped hair and black paint from her cheekbones to her hairline, a bat slung over one shoulder, freshly split lip. They're both holding up their middle fingers. _Her mom took that picture_.

She flips it around to show the screen to Moira, who promptly bursts out laughing, "My god. _Mad Max_ , Jacqueline?" There's a little bit of a pause as the other tries to catch her breath, those freckled features tinged with a bit of pink before another chuckle sounds, "Junkers who watch _Mad Max_?"

More bemused than anything when the comm is plucked out of her hand, she asks with seeming amusement, "What are you doing?" She tries to catch it back, but Moira's arms are ridiculously long, and the taller woman holds it out to the side to tap the last few buttons.

A sly smile curls over those freckled features as Moira retorts, "Nothing."

The geneticist's comm chimes across the room, and Jack peers up at her to confirm, "You're a fucking asshole, you know that?"

"Not even the tenth worst thing I've been called, Jacqueline. By you, even," Moira replies with vast amusement. A freckled nose brushes gently to hers, however, and it appears that the other intends to make good on their arrangement. Cool, soft lips brush hers once, twice, before Moira's head tilts just enough to ask permission and they settle into a warm, languid, deep sort of kiss that lasts until they need to draw back and catch their breath.

Leaning up to brush the bridge of her nose back to Moira's, Jack confides in a low cadence near the other's lips, "You're entirely too good at that."

"I know," comes a husky, inevitably smug retort, and another feather-light kiss finds its way to the scar on her lip. "Your turn, rabbit."

Jack stretches slightly, her head finding a cushion near the arm of the couch. Lifting her chin slightly with the statement as if it were a badge of pride somehow, she confides, "Got it in a bar fight in Junkertown. We were down at Wolf Wood's." Then, nestling comfortably where she is, "Since you _cheated me_ on our bargain, the least you could do is settle in."

The low thrum of a chuckle sounds at that, Moira's smile very much the cat that ate the canary as she confides, "Alright, ra-" There's a pause, the taller woman turning to click off the vidscreen before her chin comes to rest to Jack's chest, mismatched eyes watching her amusedly, "Is that better, _Furiosa_?"

A laugh escapes her despite herself, even as she wraps her arms around the other's shoulders, and Jack is aware that her face is a little warmer than it should be as she asserts with amusement, "Shut it." Unable to quell the laughter in her voice, she murmurs pleasantly, "I _am never_ fucking sleeping with you again."

"Are we playing a new game, rabbit?" Moira muses in turn, a kiss placed to her sternum through the cotton of her shirt. "Hypotheses I could disprove in under a minute?" There's a crook to the corner of that smile, amused and superior all in the same, "Have any others you would care to field while I feel like humoring you?"

"Fucker," Jack retorts with a soft snort of mirth, opting instead to tangle her fingertips in the other's hair and watching with a dim satisfaction when those coppery lashes flutter, mismatched eyes half-lid. "So the scar. It's a bit of a story. I told you I used to fight in the Scrapyard on and off, yeah?"

"I am indeed aware."

"Sometimes we'd kick it up out in the scrubland if we ran into a roving band of scavvers or the like," Jack muses, dark eyes contemplating the way the ends of Moira's hair glitter in the light like red gold when she runs it through her fingers. "That skull ring, the one I wore in Rialto? Got that fighting a scav named Dingo in the arena. Official match over...I think it was a tech drive from the omnium."

"Dingo," Moira observes with a soft sound of incredulity.

Jack can tell there's _something_ the other wants to say about Junkertown and refrains from, so she continues, "We don't really have any hard rules in the arena. More so things that are frowned on. You know. Shit like armor-piercing rounds. We aren't aiming to _kill each other_ , most of the time."

Tracing the curve of the other's ear with a fingertip, she threads a hand back into Moira's hair, the other remaining on the back of her neck, "So I disable his mecha, right? Lock up the control mechanism with a railroad spike. He hops out and throws this shit...I don't even know what it was. Sticky. Flammable. All over my mecha while I'm in it."

"Lights that bitch up like a roman candle," she recalls, and for a second, her hands still as the scent of burning metal returns to her. There's a brief shudder, which she knows that Moira must feel, because then there's another kiss to her sternum. "Burned holes the size of my hand through the metal, I jettisoned out with the emergency. _He tries to fire off another canister while I'm out of the mecha_. Most of it missed. That picture? There's a reason my goddamn hair was so short, right?"

"When it didn't go off, he hucked a shrapnel grenade and I dove behind my mecha," Jack confides with a certain annoyance at the memory, though soon jumps when a hand slides smoothly under her shirt, up along her side. She's not sure what she expected, but warm fingertips tracing the peppering of shrapnel scars flecked over her side wasn't it. The touch is gentle enough. "He had to come around the side of it to try again, so I cold-cocked him with a piece of sheet metal."

"He struck you back during the altercation?" Moira inquires, breath warm through the cotton of her shirt as the other's fingertips continue to trace along her skin. It feels good. As fucked up and up and down as their evening has been so far, she could get used to this.

She shakes her head slightly, licks her lips as if that would chase away the feeling on them, dry like desert dust and tasting faintly of copper. It's not real. She knows it isn't, but sometimes it's hard not to remember _too vividly_ , "I beat the dogshit out of him. Split my knuckles. It took me almost a month to patch the 'rabbit after that. Anyway, Alice w-" _Shit_.

There's a palm against her ribs at the hesitation, thumb still stroking in slow circles when she pauses, and Moira shifts up to press a kiss to her cheek, murmurs there, "Who is Alice, rabbit?"

"Alice is Jaeden," she replies, brushing the bridge of her nose to the other's. "Alice is the Queen. Not many people know that name. Don't spread it around, I don't want my citizenship revoked or to _get dropkicked into the sun_ on my next home leave. It's bad enough otherwise."

"It sounds like you are trying your hand at _bargaining again_ , Jacqueline," there's a low, lilting drawl to the words before a kiss finds its way beneath her jaw, warm and coaxing. Then there's a smile, slow and cunning as it cuts across those angular features, and Moira observes with decided satisfaction, "I think a better question may be - what exactly are you offering to make it worth my time?"

God, this fucking woman. If ever there was a lesbian-run counter intelligence branch, Moira would destroy it utterly, have them all turning state secrets inside three fucking seconds. 

Her head tilts back, eyes closing when a warm mouth finds the column of her throat again, lingering on a pulse point, and Jack breathes out, "What... God, do that again." She inhales sharply when the other obliges her on that front, asking on the exhale, "What the fuck do you even _want_?"

"What don't I want?" is what's whispered in her ear, a chuckle sounding thereafter. "But you haven't even held up your end of our first bargain, have you? Finish your story." 

The corner of the other's lips turns up amusedly, "Perhaps I'll contemplate the matter further while you do."

Draping her arms around the other's shoulders to continue tracing her fingertips upon the back of Moira's neck, Jack snorts softly in response, "How I got the scar? Alice - Jae took me down to Wolf Wood's for a beer because I was crook about my mecha. Dingo brought some buddies down for a rematch. I ducked under a flying stool and came up between her fist and another Junker. Out cold for three hours."

Her dark eyes half-lid, Jack glances up when the lights dim - maybe set on a timer? She wonders what time it is - and she teases with a current of satisfaction in her smooth cadence, "Maybe I'll just let her kick me into the sun and keep bargaining. It's been working out in my favour so far."

"Has it?" Moira inquires in the limited light, her unmatched eyes somehow looking a touch more vivid than normal. There's a moment in which she considers asking about the scarlet one, its iris now the colour of wine, more akin to blood when beheld in the light. 

"That's the secret about Junkers, babe," Jack answers, the wolfish curl of a smile touching her features as she tips up until their noses brush, doing just that before she whispers, "We're suckers for this soft shit."

Softly-calloused fingertips find the blade of the other's shoulder, tracing the line it forms beneath lean musculature and then back as Moira observes amusedly, "Don't you get bold when you talk about Junkertown."

"I feel bold when I talk about Junkertown," the words are honest as they fall from Jack's lips, and even though for a moment it seems a bit stupid, her eyes half-lid for a moment as she mulls it over, she confides, "And to be honest, I feel a bit bold with you." She feels the subtle shift in the muscle as the other gets comfortable. "You appreciate rough edges without trying to iron them out. Oasis isn't always like that. It's not like home."

They circle back around to personal. To the point, back again for the little details. It isn't raw this time. Just nostalgic. Different, but it doesn't surprise her in the slightest when the taller woman asks, "Tell me why it isn't like home?"

Tell me. Give up more little pieces of yourself now that I've seen this much, show me how it all works. She can respect that, in her own way, but answers, "No. I want an answer for an answer now, gorgeous." A soft kiss is offered by way of incentive, before Jack confirms, "I'll tell you why, but I want to know the same for you."

There's silence, and for a moment she thinks that Moira is going to get up, but instead, the other repositions them on the couch to get comfortable, on their sides and face to face, with Jack between her and the back cushions. As a cool hand touches her cheek, tucking an errant strand of dark hair behind her ear, the taller woman confesses, "Oasis is my home now...as much as any other."

"There's nowhere that calls to you?" Jack presses then, turning her head slightly to place a light kiss to the palm of a lavender-tinged hand before nestling a little closer. "Somewhere that you feel like your roots are, that makes you feel grounded and just...you?"

"My grandfather had a farm in Éire," comes a low response, unmatched eyes distant for a moment. Nostalgic. "Out in the pastureland south of Dublin. My brothers and I would run wild on it, looking for anything that could be an adventure. There was once another, but not anymore."

"Ireland, right? I've seen some vids from there," Jack confesses in a soft cadence, nestled in warm and comfortable now. "It all looked so _green_. Junkertown's not like that. It's all red earth and metal, endless blue sky." Her hand rests on Moira's side, and she brushes a thumb there in gentle circles, enjoying the contact. "Oasis is too clean, too polished. Like everyone is stripped down to their most efficient parts. Watching all these perfect people glide from one thing to the next and not knowing how to or really wanting to rub elbows with them."

"What is your favorite memory of Junkertown?" the name is devoid of its usual acerbic edge, the humor that often undercuts Moira's assumption of the place she calls home gone. A cool fingertip traces the outline of her ear with the question.

There's a blanket on the back of the couch, she thinks, and she wants it. It takes a moment to feel around for it, less than that to toss it haphazardly over the both of them and nestle back in, her arms finding their way under Moira's shirt to curve warmly to bare skin. Resting her cheek to the other's, she emits a contented sound, then confides languidly, "Racing my hoverbike on the salt flats with my dad. We built the bike together. Took months. The day we went out there, the sun was so bright it was almost blinding. We went _so fast_ it was terrifying. Exhilarating. It kicked up the salt behind us in this spray that looked like little bits of glass, just glittering in every colour."

Allowing her eyes to slip closed at the feeling of fingertips threading through her hair, Jack inquires softly, "What about you? Favorite memory of Dublin?"

"Not quite Dublin. Glendalough, down in Wicklow," that low voice is lulling, smooth and deep like a current of dark water. "Gleann Dá Loch. It's beautiful. There is a little farm there that my grandfather owned. He passed some years ago but it is still in the family. It's green, as far as the eye can see, and in the summer or the autumn, we would go down to the lake." She feels Moira exhale slowly, hears the subtle warmth that creeps into that low cadence, "It is where we would have Christmas. All of us would come out for it. Fire in the hearth, holly and ivy. I have not been in years."

"Why not?" Jack trails her fingertips slowly up the other's spine, feels the barely perceptible shiver in the musculature beneath with a vague fascination. She whispers back, voice languid, "It sounds lovely."

There's a quiet exhalation in her hair, and Moira murmurs there in the dim light, "Speaking of it now, rabbit? I couldn't say." Silence stretches between them for a few seconds before the other prompts in continuation, "Do you have any pleasant memories of Oasis?"

_You_. It's the first thing that rises in her mind, and when it does, it's like casting a stone into deep water. It ripples outward. Sinks in. _You are the best time I've had in this city._ The words are on the tip of her tongue when she searches those mismatched eyes with her own dark.

"You are staring again," that low, lilting voice observes, though that ocean-and-blood remains set to hers.

Her hands find the taller woman's jaw, thumbs stroking up the angular line of it as she draws Moira forward, brushing her lips to the cool, soft curve of the other's once before she confesses quietly, "You."


	16. moonrise kingdom only made for two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just fluff, really  
> Would have made the too-long last chapter even longer  
> If you tell me Moira doesn't have ridiculous clothes hidden somewhere, I will fight you

Jack wakes with a start in the dark, a little shiver running through her slim frame when she recognizes with _vast disappointment_ that a measure of warmth has gone. It takes her a moment further to place that it's at her back and side now, further still to place that she's not on the couch, but being _carried somewhere_ , a long arm curved carefully beneath her shoulders and a second under her knees.

"Shh, rabbit," there's a low voice near her ear then, and she recognizes, if only by the growing familiarity of it's tone and the sudden gleam of blue and scarlet she catches by the moonlight through the curtains as they pass a window, that she's still at Moira's house and not in her apartment in downtown Oasis. She relaxes, then tension in her form unwinding, and feels the light touch of a chaste kiss to her temple. "I hadn't meant to wake you."

Down a long row of closed door, to the end of the hall and into another room in which there are no lights but the faintest hint of the silvery moon beyond drawn curtains. When Moira bends to set her down, it's at the foot of a bed that seems _impossibly comfortable_ , the duvet pleasantly soft as she nestles into it, and her eyes slip closed almost immediately.

Fingertips pull at the front of her shirt, only lightly, and she hears that low voice ask gently, "Are you sleeping in this?"

She shakes her head. There's a moment in which she moves as if to remove it, but it's late and _god is she tired_ , and mercifully, Moira simply directs, "Stop."

One warm hand and one cool one are careful, slipping the shirt over her head, then drawing down the joggers to place them...somewhere. When she's lifted up once more, she's placed in what feels like it must be the center of the bed, and if the duvet is soft, the sheets are somehow impossibly softer. A tall, warm body comes to rest behind her, curling around her with the pleasant warmth of skin on skin, and while the arm that slides around her is cooler than the rest of that lean frame, it doesn't bother her once the duvet has been drawn up around them. 

"Goodnight, rabbit," a soft voice whispers near her ear, breath warm behind it, and the sound causes a faint smile to curl the corner of her lips even as she drifts back off to sleep.

\--- 

"Coffee?" Jack inquires as she steps into the kitchen, her smooth voice still frayed at the edges from sleep, drawing out her accent in a more pronounced manner than usual. Her dark hair is in a loose braid, falling over her shoulder and still damp from the shower, and while she has found a pair of shorts in her things, the soft grey sweater she pilfered from the geneticist's closet is over-large and comfortable in the very best way. That it's emblazoned with a faded jack-o'lantern and reads 'big mood' doesn't hurt. 

Not waiting for a proper answer to the question, the slender mechanic takes the mug near Moira on the counter and lifts it to take a sip, an impressive face made as she leans a hip to the counter and looks up to remark, "This is still horrible."

"It's not for you," Moira retorts with a chuckle, reaching over to take the ceramic back and take her own sip from it. She concedes with a nod toward the machine, "You make a cup how you like it and I will try it, but black coffee does the job admirably."

Long fingers catch in the front of the sweater then, the taller woman's voice a little incredulous, if thoroughly amused, as she asks, "This is what you selected? Of all things."

"You said I could borrow something," Jack answers back with vast amusement, evidently pleased with herself. Tipping up, she places a light, warm kiss to the other's lips, all the more pleased for how those coppery lashes flutter momentarily for it. As she slips toard the coffee machine, she confides with a decided mischief, "Finder's keepers. It's mine now."

"You can't just keep my sweater, Jacqueline," comes the retort with a soft snort of amusement, those freckled features similarly mirthful in the murky light through the window.

"I mean...you could try to get it back. I'm susceptible to bribery," Jack confides as she skirts around the taller woman to fetch a mug for herself, then starts to look through the cupboards, most of which are bare. After several minutes of searching, and a trip to the pantry, she flicks a look at Moira from the door and asks with amusedly, "Do you actually live here, or is this just a stock home that you take girls back to? Your pantry is _appalling_."

Moira adds drily, "The metal filings, motor oil, and geiger counter are in the garage."

"Ass," she responds from near the open refridgerator, looking over her shoulder at the taller woman for a moment, then flashing a smile as she shakes her head slowly and turns back.

Moira snorts softly, though the corner of her mouth curls in response nonetheless, and remains silent as she watches the shorter woman spoon two heaping teaspoons of powdered sugar into the bottom of the mug, then add cocoa powder, cinnamon, and...chili powder. Quaint. Coffee follows, then what seems an ungodly amount of milk, before the Junker gives the beverage a stir with a spoon and passes it over, hopping up onto the counter to perch there.

"This is an abomination," Moira informs her before even deigning to lift it to her lips. It isn't dreadful, she concludes, excepting the cloying sweetness that pervades long after that tentative sip has been swallowed. With a cursory shake of her head, she hands it back, thinking in that moment that Jack's eyes looking at her are as dark as her own coffee - almost black, the pupils indiscernible unless the irises are warmed by direct light. "I think I'll leave that to you."

There's a cheeky smile, one that toys at fond around the edges, on those coppery features now. Jack looks over the rim of the mug, and she hears the subtleties of an Australian accent play out like a tune as the Junker asks, "So do you actually eat breakfast, gorgeous? Or do you just haunt the halls like a vampire and live on coffee and cigarettes?"

It's funny, the easy way the Australian speaks to her. As if she weren't a Minister, overseeing an entire sector of Oasis's scientific engine. As if she weren't a scientist, who, on experimenting on her own person had caused near irreparable damage in the pursuit of knowledge - the old question of _what if_? As if all the history she had shared the previous evening were nothing but a blank slate to be embellished on, written over with a kinder story. She wasn't sure, initially, how she felt about it, but the _easiness_ of this is pleasant. Comfortable in a way she hasn't felt in a long time.

"Mostly the latter," Moira replies, unable to keep a small smile from curling the corner of her lips at the other's expression. She advises, "There are some biscuits in the pantry if you want them."

"Biscuits," Jacqueline repeats, as if the word were both foreign to her and incredibly amusing in the same note. "You fucking charmer. Nothing like a box of dried biscuits to start off your morning. I bet they expired in twenty seventy."

"Or leftover Japanese," Moira points out practically, her smile transitioning into a bit of a smirk. "And I did make you coffee."

"You made yourself coffee, you right shit," comes the response, though not without a pleasant laugh and the crooking of a finger in her direction. 

There's an amused look in those dark eyes now, a dusting of rose to the coppery cheekbones that wasn't there before. Stepping nearer, she doesn't protest when Jacks sets the mug to the side with a soft 'clink' on the surface of the counter, taking her head into hands that are still warm from holding it, and kisses her softly. It's warm, and it tastes like cinnamon, coffee, and cocoa. Thumbs ghost over her cheekbones before the Junker places another, lighter kiss there, then confides, "If finder's keepers does apply to people..."

Dark eyes slip open only just enough, half-lid when they meet hers.

"I might want to keep you."

If this is how it will be, standing in the sunlight in the late morning, the taste of cinnamon and cocoa on her lips, she just might let her.


	17. i saw god with a halo and a handgun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ** When you post too many chapters in one week  
> ** Jack vs. Jack: Fight!  
> ** Hit first, ask questions later (graphic violence)  
> ** Sweater theft

It starts as a continuation of their _bargain_. A system that falls into place without meaning for it, not really. It's nothing that Jack would admit to outside Moira, or Moira outside Jack, both of them know that. At least not now. The rules are simple. You may ask a question, and the answer is worth an answer to your own question. You may ask a question, and the answer is worth two kisses. 

It's an adjustment for both of them, but Jack wasn't wrong - she's a sucker for that soft shit. She's starting to suspect, hidden under the layers of cold, the armours that Moira dons day to day to deal with the outside world, that the other is too. If only in private. If only sometimes. When the comm chimes softly, she finds herself reaching for it, flicking it open to see what she's been sent - read and respond, or shoot off another question of her own to await the answer.

They learn a lot of things in that second month that they see each other. They learn that Moira's time has more constraints on it than either of them considered. They learn that Akande is _singularly skilled_ at ruining their plans at the absolute last minute, usually unintended. They learn that it's funny how much you can learn about a person when you only seem to see them in passing. When the majority of your interaction is a string of seemingly endless messages.

Calls late at night when everyone else is asleep, and you know neither of you are. Whatever they've settled into is...strange. But it's not uncomfortable, and stranger still are the nights at the end of that second month and into the third where one comm or another doesn't light up with a call or a message. Sometimes it's something simple. What are you doing? Where are you? How are you? Sometimes it's a question about this or that. How do you account for nerve burn-out in medical implants while maintaining conductivity? That requires a longer conversation, a verbal one. She doesn't hate that.

Life comes at you fast, and if Junkers are good at anything, it's surviving. Adapting. Finding a way to make something work that they told you was never going to run again. That seems irreparably broken. You repurpose it. You find a way for it to work, if not in the capacity it was meant to, then in another. There are concessions. Times that they _make time for each other_ , even though it never seems often enough or long enough. She hadn't lied in the kitchen. She wanted to _keep her_. Keep this one good thing Oasis had given.

So when the comm rings instead of chimes while she's walking back to her apartment, she answers it.

"Hey babe."

"Jacqueline," the voice on the other end of the line is low, lilting, familiar. "How do you feel about dinner?" There's a pause. "It would have to be in the lab. I am about to _end the miserable life_ of Minister Al-Kharim."

"Funding again?" Jack inquires, not surprised at the determined location. She checks the time. Not too late for most places they would get takeout. 

"Resource allocation. He is borrowing the majority of my interns through the end of the week," Moira sounds _displeased_ , and she hears the exhalation that follows the words. She's smoking. Must be outside.

"He sounds like a real prick," she confides bluntly, her boots making a soft sound as she cuts across the crosswalk in the golden lamplight, toward her apartment building in the distance. The golden lamplight illuminates dark patterns in its brickwork. "You have something in mind? I could pick it up and come to you."

"How do you feel about Japanese?" Moira takes another drag of her cigarette on the other end of the line. "It will be all but impossible to leave the lab while my tests are running, but we could visit at the very least."

Buzzing into the building, Jack shoulders through the first set of doors and over toward the stairs, starting to hop up them two at a time, "I have tomorrow off, and the boys are working graveyard, so we didn't have any plans. I need to change quick but that's all." Pausing outside her apartment door, the key not yet in the lock, she asks, "You want me to pick you up anything else on the way down? Change of clothes? Toothbrush?"

As she leans her shoulder on the doorframe, there's one last puff before a door opens and closes on the comm, and Moira drawls, "You could bring me back my sweater, rabbit. It's a bit chilly in the labs this evening."

"The pumpkin sweater is mine. I stole it fair and square," Jack intones with a low laugh, her voice touched with a bit of brazen satisfaction. Then, teasing, "What'll you give me for it if I bring it down?"

"It's _my_ sweater, Jacqueline," comes the response, matter-of-fact as ever, though she can tell a current of mirth runs beneath the lilt. "That I lent to you out of chivalrous intent and you then _absconded with_." There's a moment of ensuing silence, before a chuckle sounds, "Two."

"Four," Jack shoots back without hesitation, unable to fight down the little grin that creeps onto her features. "I'll bring the sweater. But I'm stealing it back when it smells like you again. That means you have to wear it."

The husky laugh on the other end of the comm makes her fingertips a little warm, "I don't want it back so I can _not wear it_ , Jacqueline. I'll concede to four." Then, with a certain intense curiosity, as if having picked the mischief out of her voice, "What else of mine do you have over there, rabbit?"

"Nothing I'll admit to. Or return," she confides in a voice that is far more innocent in cadence than the truth. Tapping her key card to the door, which unlocks with a soft 'click', Jack pauses before opening it to ask, "You want boba if I stop on the way? Black sugar?"

"That sounds lovely."

Jack checks the time on her comm, confirming with the other as her shoulder settles to the door, "I'll be about forty, maybe an hour if there's a line. Send me your order?"

"Sent."

Her fingertips play over the communicator once it lights up with the info she needs, and she intones in a warmer voice than she remembers having, "Got it, babe. See you in a bit."

A smile lingers upon her features as she looks down at the comm, remaining as she shoulders open the door and shuts it behind her, up until the point that she realizes that there's someone in her apartment. The hair rises on the back of her neck, even as her eyes flick sideways in the dark. 

"Miss Vargas, we've been expect-"

It happens fast. But it's not easy to get the drop on most Junkers. And she's _Waimarie Vargas's_ daughter. While she never served in the A.L.F., herself, her mother taught her enough. Instinct tells her to hit first and ask questions later. So that's what she does, her knuckles splitting on hard metal and glass to spatter blood over a...face? A mask. It should have broken his nose and not her knuckles. 

The comm clatters to the ground before he reaches out in response, and she can see even in the dim light how much taller than her he is. Broadly-muscled, the leather of his jacket taut over a frame that easily outweighs her own. There isn't any time for anything else. She ducks under his arm and pushes in forward instead of back - Akande taught her that - slamming a knee as hard as she can between his legs. The air rushes out of him in a harsh sound. She sweeps the leg to take him down.

The door - she darts for it. Fuck the comm. In fact, fuck everything in that moment but _getting out of there_. _Hit hard, maintain distance,_ she can hear Akande's voice buzzing in the back of her skull. _Make yourself a smaller target. Hands up, Jack._

There are two of them, she realizes all too late, hitting the floor hard when she can't move out of the way fast enough and the second one all but tackles her from behind. She twists like a cat, slams her elbow back as hard as she can into someone skinny, then slams it back again when something cracks and a hard noise chokes out of _whoever the fuck is in her apartment_. The hold on her slackens enough for her to scramble free, but her eyes are still adjusting to the dark.

Someone else is _looking for the lights_ and if they find them, it's over.

The voices in her head are cacophonous. Simultaneous. Her mother's, telling her that once you've hit the ground - if they can get you there - you're already dead. _You're dead, Jack. You're dead. Get up. Do it again._ " She can taste the dust from the scrublands and see the silhouette of Waimarie Vargas behind the trees for a fraction of a second. Then _it creeps up on her_ , the taste of blood in her mouth and the smell of burning metal. She's going to have to fight her way there. When she finds her feet, it's after her hand has found the hilt of the knife in her boot. He darts forward, catches the wrist faster than anyone should have been able to, wrenches it up behind her back _hard_.

There's pain, that old familiar friend, the one she first became acquainted with when she crashed into a doghouse behind trailers in the Outback, that she learned intimately in an abandoned militia bunker near the omnium years later. It lances, white-hot up her arm like a bolt of lightning, like the charging up of the solar wire that burned its spiraling coil into her skin, and sends the knife clattering to the ground to glint in the moonlight through the blinds.

When a leather-clad hand clamps over her mouth to prevent any more sound than the apartment has already made that evening, she sinks her teeth in until she tastes blood, and when it jerks back, bites out, "Aro, ten-th."

Ten-thirteen. A snapfire sound that would have sent a message three places at once. _In need of immediate assistance_. Her mother. Oasis Security. Moira. She had programmed the last one in after someone broke their window last week. She has a good idea of who now.

It's been a _long time_ since she's taken a direct hit to the face. It wasn't fun when Alice did it in Junkertown, scrapping with Dingo and his scavvers in Wolf Wood's bar. It isn't fun now. Whoever this is doesn't have a good enough angle to knock her out cold, but the words break in her mouth regardless as her head reels. There's the taste of blood, god she hates it. There's the taste of flecks of tooth that swim in it, familiar. Hands on her again, and she claws for the softer sections of the body within her grasp - the throat, the eyes, her slim frame all knees and boots and elbows and _teeth_ every time they try to hold her down.

She spits blood in someone's face. Her hand is throbbing from where the knuckles have split, but she slams them into someone again, missing the mask and hitting flesh hard instead. When she's thrown into the wall, it's near the mantle, and her hand reaches up under it to grasp the knife that Galveston always keeps there _just in case_. 

_We don't live in a great neighborhood_ , she can hear him say. Maybe she can...she can see the slit of a red visor in the dim light, flecked in a smattering of crimson. The sound of a pulse pistol powering up sounds too close for her liking.

"Drop it," a voice commands, steely and feminine to her right. German. "Now."

Three. Jack can see the outline of her now, a winged silhouette between her and the blinds, the weapon outstretched and sighted on her. Too far away to make a play for it. When she doesn't, there isn't a sound - only the slamming of a silenced pulse round into her shoulder so hard it knocks the air out of her. Non-lethal. Fucking hurts like shit anyways.

"Found the lights, luv," they flick on. British? Near the hallway.

When her vision clears, she can see blue eyes. A round face, pale, crowned in some sort of..fucking halo. Blonde hair swept back into a ponytail. She's in the kitchen. The lights are on. She doesn't know how she got there.

"Target secure," he says into the comm, a conversation happening in her kitchen that she hadn't anticipated. He watches her from behind that red visor like a hawk. Perhaps like someone who knows exactly what she will do to get out of here. He isn't wrong. Tear off the limb to escape the trap. There's some truth to the opinion that beneath all the rust and machine oil, Junkers are all rabid dogs. His blood is still on her teeth. 

Her face _hurts_ , the lip split and bloodied, another split to her brow if she were guessing, there's a dull, persistent ache near her eye. Dark eyes watch them nonetheless, in silence as the man standing across from her speaks to someone on the comm. Her breathing is still coming hard from the scuffle in the living room, and with her arms threaded through the back of the chair and zip-tied at the wrist, there isn't much she can do. The position isn't helping how her wrist or elbow feel in the slightest.

At least she made them bleed for it.

Her knuckles hurt like hell, and she can feel a warm coil of blood around them, dripping steadily onto the kitchen floor. Still, she waits for them to speak - watches with hell in her eyes as they move to and fro - the skinny one headed down the hallway toward her room. The blonde one is inspecting the comm. It's locked. _You won't find whatever you're looking for_ , Jack thinks to herself. She can see it on their faces already. They hadn't intended it to go this far south. They want information, but they wouldn't have the stomach for how hard they'd have to go to get it. 

It isn't hard to guess who they are. The taste of copper is nauseating on her teeth. She leans to spit blood onto the floor, wipes her chin on her shoulder. They know she's conscious now. Soldier 76 - the broad-shouldered man in blue and red leather that her fucking _blood_ is speckled all over. Mercy, tapping lightly at the comm unit as if it might relinquish a secret. Tracer, who has disappeared down the hall in the direction of her room, holding her ribs all the while.

"This is _not_ how we wanted to have this conversation, Miss Vargas," the Soldier intones, his voice a little raspy behind the visor. Dark eyes narrow in on him. All of her senses are in overdrive, riding an adrenaline high, and she's thankful that her mind is laser-focused and not shattered by it. "We just wanted to talk with you."

"And you thought the best way to _talk to me_ was by breaking into my flat and waiting in the dark?" Jack inquires in a voice she hasn't heard in quite a while, one that cut it's teeth in the Scrapyard and found the blood and metal to its liking. When her lip curls back, she can see the reflection of red teeth in the metal of his helmet. "The fuck did you think would happen?"

"Not this," comes a gruff response. _No shit_.

There's a hand on her shoulder then, warm and gentle, and it's that that makes her jump. Mercy. The steeliness in those blue eyes traded for what looks like compassion, quicker than you could flip a switch. The blonde woman advises, that accent prominent, "You need med-"

Her boots plant against the floor, and she shifts the chair backwards as much as she can, which isn't much. She's not sure if it's the tone of her voice or the look in her eyes that makes the other withdraw, but she bites out all the same, "Don't fucking touch me. I will _fucking bury you_."

"We had intended," the Soldier intones in a gravelly timbre, "To discuss your current involvement with the terrorist cell known as Talon." His arms folded over his chest, he confides, "You're stepping your toes into dangerous waters, Miss Vargas. Making some unwise friends. You should know the risks involved."

"What? That Overwatch will show up in my apartment to knock the piss out of me?" Jack asks, dark eyes flitting between him and Mercy. She tenses visibly when it looks like the latter may approach, relaxing only minutely when she returns to the comm instead. "You realize that if this happens in Junkertown, people are _actively trying to kill you_."

She still tastes blood on her teeth. His. Hers. Does it matter at this point? Lifting her chin, Jack asks, "The fuck are you talking about? I work for R&D. You have my fucking ID card on the table."

"We know about Rialto."

Dark lashes flutter as she looks back at him, jaw setting subtly as she watches him set up a small holoscreen on the table. Rialto. When the pictures flicker to life, they paint a clearer picture - Moira nestled beside her in the restaurant. The exterior of a marble building as they slip inside. Coffee on the balcony with Akande. _What other pictures do you have?_ She thinks it. Doesn't say it.

"Akande Ogundimu and Moira O'Deorain are not the sort of people that you want to publically associate with, Miss Vargas. There are consequences to working with Talon," he states then, leaning forward a bit to confide, "Collusion with terrorists? How would that look on your record?"

When her dark eyes close, then open once more after a moment's thought, she observes in a smoother cadence, "The law considers _you_ to be a terrorist. My mother, at least in Australia, is considered a terrorist." Her jaw sets subtly once more, "I don't let her tell me who _I can and can't fuck, either._ "

"So unless going down on Moira O'Deorain is, specifically, a breach of international law?" Jack retorts, resting the back of her skull to the back of the chair as she watches him like a snake about to strike. Junkertown bold, her we go. It settles into her bones easily, crass and brazen, flashing in the corners of a cutting smile and glittering in dark eyes. "I think we both know you don't have shit."

"What?" he sounds as incredulous as she feels. 

From the corner of her eye, she can see Mercy's face. It looks like she just forgot how the Hippocratic oath works. Jack files that away for later.

"Rialto," she answers simply, searching his features and recognizing in an instant - he doesn't know. He has no fucking clue. How do you get all those pictures and not...she could laugh right now. If everything didn't hurt so much, she might.

"It's the first time that you were witnessed in conversation with Talon in a formal setting," the Soldier retorts bluntly, the implication still not having settled in. She blinks once, sitting back in her chair a little. Okay then. "The Sombra Collective has been utilizing your tech in the field. Fifty percent reduction on..." he checks his comm, "The mirage effect. Modified neural implants."

"That's shocking. A hacker collective that steals tech?" Jack is aware of how scathing her voice is right now. She doesn't care if he's right or wrong, she just wants to get under his skin. Her chin lifts in a challenging gesture, jaw setting as she flicks a derisive glance over him. "No wonder they decommissioned you stupid fucks."

"Don't you-" It looks like he might hit her again. _Do it_ , she thinks. _You won't_.

"Jack?" is said with a distinctly British accent.

"What?" they both say the word in tandem, then eye each other before looking at her. 

It's a labcoat. _Okay, so maybe she's taken more than the sweater._ The little one - Tracer, she recognizes - has it looped over an arm. There's a name stitched on the front, and red lipstick on the collar. 

"I don't think she knows, Jack," Mercy says quietly, almost inaudibly as she holds up the labcoat, a thumb tracing over the embroidered name there. _What the fuck is she doing?_

"I know that I'm about to be real fucking late picking up Japanese," Jack observes softly, bitterly, mostly to herself as she looks toward the table.

Whoever he is underneath that visor - also Jack - she knows from body language alone that he's surprised and a little pissed. He picks the comm up from the table to tuck it into his jacket, then states simply, "Look, Miss Vargas. I'm willing to _entertain_ that you don't know what's being done with your tech. But Moira O'Deorain is a lot of things. The chief of which is _dangerous_." 

"You need better... _friends_ ," he states gruffly, "Acquaintances. Overwatch could be that for you. We aren't an organization that you want to align yourself _against_ , but we could come to an alternative arrangement."

"Think about what side of this you want to end up on," the Soldier states, leaving her comm and ID on top of the labcoat on the table, along with a small comm chip she presumes holds the information she needs to contact them. _It has their fucking logo on it. Cute._

"Get the fuck out," Jack replies, shoulders tense as the zip tie is cut. 

"We'll give you some time to rethink that answer," he answers back, tipping his head toward the door as the other two file out. "It's not too late to make the right call here."

And then they're gone.


	18. kiss your lover with that filthy mouth, you fucking monster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ** Tonight on the evening news  
> ** It's not an interrogation unless you cuddle  
> ** Junker downplays consistently  
> ** I hate how Jack texts
> 
> Irish translations are marked with ** under the sections for reading ease

It takes her a little longer to patch up than she would have liked, at least until she looks passable enough to go out. A shower is the first thing, to get the blood and the sweat off, then medigel to her knuckles, on the split to her lip, in the hollow of her eye that's bruising and the nick above it on her eyebrow. To the bruise left behind by a non-lethal pulse round that blooms across her collarbone and shoulder. On a swollen wrist. She learns that it's hard as fuck to use butterfly tape when your wrist doesn't turn the way it's supposed to without _hurting like a bitch_. 

She scrubs up the blood in the living room so that Chance, Gal, and Bix won't freak out when they get home, feeling fairly certain from the ringing in her ears and the dull ache in her skull that she has a concussion. It wouldn't be the first time. While she's in her room, packing a to-go bag and looking for _that sweater_ , she shoots off a quick message. 

ja.vargas: running late still coming eta 35  
m.odeorain: Is everything alright?  
ja.vargas: yes

Lie. Blatant, bold-faced lie. There it is. Heather gray. Orange jack o'lantern with a frown outlined on the front. Reads _Big Mood _. It's terrible, and she found it in Moira's closet in a row of _terrible sweaters_ that she loved. She slips it on over her tank top, pulling the fabric to her face for a moment. It smells like bergamot and burnt amber, faintly, but there. __

____

ja.vargas: no, but ill tell you about it when i get there  
ja.vargas: im fine

She barely has time to shoulder her to-go bag, packed full, before the comm rings. She hits 'answer' without thinking about it. 

"Jacqueline?" that low, lilting voice sounds in her ear. Jack exhales a breath she didn't know she was holding, standing outside the door in her too-large sweatshirt over dark joggers, with a little bit of blood on her boots. She locks the door. 

"Hey babe," is all she can think to say, voice a little tighter than she would have liked as she heads down the stairs. "I'm fine. I found your sweater."

A few seconds of silence, the observation, "Fine is never fine, rabbit. You don't sound _fine_."

"You're too smart for your own good, you know that?" Jack confides into the comm, hissing a little bit when her smile pulls at her lip. "I'm on my way down to the restaurant now. Promise I'll tell you about it when I get down there?"

"You do not _have to_ come down here if there is something amiss," sounds on the other end of the line, amidst the clinking of what she assumes is glassware on a lab table. "We could easily reschedule. It would hardly be the first time."

Silence.

"Rabbit?"

"I'm here," Jack answers back, not certain what to say now. She cuts around a woman on the sidewalk, sees worry on a stranger's face and isn't sure how she feels about that. In Junkertown, this would be commonplace. She'd have gotten a prideful nod. Good job. You're walking. You won. It doesn't feel like winning. "Today is shit. I just want to see you."

"I could send a car," the offer is there.

"No, it's fine. I'm outside the restaurant right now," Jack confesses, slipping inside and into the back of the line at the counter. It's busy. "I'll be down there soon, okay?"

"Alright."

While it's not perhaps the most comfortable that she's ever been running errands, _like hell_ is she staying home now, and she's fairly certain that Moira will be able to patch it a little better than she could, laboratory work to do or not. The order takes a few minutes still, and she pays extra for a taro smoothie with extra ice, which she holds to the side of her face as she takes the elevator down into the basement of the genetics building.

There's the soft sound of music emanating from the office, sounds like maybe the Gorillaz, and the corner of her mouth twitches slightly. When she pushes the door open with her shoulder, slipping in, there's a moment of relief in which she sees Moira behind the desk. Tall, beautiful, more than a little imperious even with the shadow of dark circles beneath her eyes as she scans over a report. Her tie is undone, as it usually is after the interns and assistants have left for the day. Scarlet button-down with the first few buttons near the collar undone, powder-blue tie. She loves it. 

There's a glass of whiskey atop the desk, the tell-tale indicator that the taller woman is unwinding for the evening, even if that evening must be spent in the lab. She watches with a vague fascination as the other continues to read for a time, long fingers curling around the glass to swallow the rest of the amber liquid in one go, and then slides it back atop the desk. Jack shakes her head a little, moves over to start setting cartons on the desk and then drops into the chair opposite Moira, her voice carefully soft as she intones, "It looks worse than it is. Don't freak out."

"I'm sure it still tastes f-" the words cut off sharply as unmatched eyes lift toward her, narrow abruptly when they realize that she isn't talking about the takeout. The datapad hits the desk so hard that for a moment, Jack is worried that she may have cracked the casing, and that tall frame circles the desk far more swiftly than she thought it could. "This is _not fine_ , Jacqueline."

"Yeah? You should see the other guy," she replies, knowing it was a stupid thing to say as soon as it leaves her lips. She hisses softly when cool fingertips probe at her lip, then tip her chin back to inspect her eyes in the light. 

"Close your eyes," that lilting voice is dark, a current of steel beneath it in a warning note, but the touch is gentle. "Open them." When she does, mismatched eyes search hers for several seconds before Moira confirms what she suspected, "You have a concussion."

There's no question. Moira isn't _asking_ so much as she's demanding when long fingers wrap in the back of her sweater and pull, and she stands up slowly, letting the other take the smoothie from her and set it on the desk. A thousand things run behind those freckled features at a breakneck speed and she isn't sure where they'll settle until, thankfully, they hit clinical for her.

Moira's bedside manner is impeccable and atrocious all at once. A cool hand rests on the back of her neck to steer her into the lab and then toward one of the examination tables, which she settles onto without protest. Then the taller woman is in her personal space with a scanner, demarcating all the places on the datapad she perceives an injury and asking pointed questions about where and how much and how does this feel. 

"Jacqueline."

She's at best dimly aware that the other has said her name, simply watching the other's features, tracking the freckles where they crest over an upswept cheekbone. Cool fingertips tilt her chin up slightly, and what follows is a softer, "Rabbit."

That pulls her out of it, dark eyes flicking up to meet ocean-and-wine, vivid and deep even beneath the laboratory light. A thumb grazes its way over her lower lip in a gentle gesture, given the stitch that had to be placed in the upper one to hold the split until the nanites have kicked in better.

When she expects angry, that low and lilting voice is surprisingly even instead, takes her by surprise, "Tell me what transpired."

Tilting her head subtly, Jack looks down at her hand and picks out the stitches along her knuckles, faintly translucent where they mark coppery skin, "Got jumped in my apartment." She licks her lips as if it will make them feel somehow less dry, "Three of them in the living room in the dark."

She flexes her hand experimentally, which earns her the faint pressure of fingernails at the line of her jaw as Moira intones firmly, "I did not stitch that so that you could break them before the nanites have so much as begun with their work. Cease."

Jack nods a little, relaxing her hand once more to relieve the tension that stretched over the ridge of her knuckles. They're still bruised, but more yellow-green than the purple-black that marked them when she came down here. With the too-large sweater rolled to her elbows, she can see the other mottled marks have faded as well, and the wrap on her wrist is cool and comforting by comparison to how it felt before. 

Listing forward, she rests her cheek gingerly to the other's collarbone, exhaling in a slow, fluid breath when the hand at her jaw releases and long, toned arms come to rest loosely around her instead. She's trying to focus on this. On the nearness. On the questions. On the scent of bergamot and burnt amber that lingers around the other woman as a constant. 

Her hand searches for a moment, slim frame sinking back to slip it into her pocket, and she holds up the silver comm chip between two fingers for the other to take. 

There is an instant after Moira takes it from her, in which she watches the dark thing that flits behind those eyes stare out of them, and prowling hot on its heels is a cold sort of fury, one that glitters like fragments of ice on the surface of a frozen lake. Whatever rests below it is frigid and deep and unrepentantly hateful, and it threatens to consume those angular features. The comm chip is set down on the examination table beside her with a soft 'clink', handling it as if it were a particularly distasteful insect.

" _Cad a dhéanfaidh mé le déanamh agat?_ " What makes a shiver run up her spine is not the way Moira's ocean-and-blood eyes hold hers, or the subsequent brush of a feather-light kiss to her brow, tender and careful. It's the note of iron beneath the low, coaxing silk of that voice - as if all it's fine smoothness were wrapped around a garrotte wire. There's a slow exhalation near her hairline as Moira speaks in the devil's voice, "Rabbit. I need you to tell me _everything_. Be _very specific_ as to the details. It is imperative that there is nothing that could be questioned. Do you understand me? This is a...delicate time."

** What am I going to do with you?

"I underst-" 

A hiss escapes her and she stiffens up suddenly, feeling a sharp sensation in the crook of her elbow, and when Jack looks down she can see the med-injector being set down on the table beside her with the echoing sound of metal on metal. Moira's hand - the one without the talons - is warm when it lifts to cup her cheek, stroke smoothly over the line of her jaw with a thumb, and the taller woman instructs, "Start with who was present when you arrived at your apartment. You mentioned three. Elaborate for me."

Not entirely certain what has transpired, her nerves frayed at the edges and more than a little raw, Jack is both on edge and relieved when the pain starts to fade, replaced by a warm and languid feeling that diminishes the dull aches in her bones. Moira must have given her something. She suspects a fairly high dosage of painkillers based on the sudden nature of the relief, but that does not explain _what the other said_ or _how she said it_.

"There are rules," Jack murmurs back, feeling the languid currents pull at her as if beckoning her to sleep. Her voice is smoother than she anticipated, and she watches as freckled features draw nearer hers, then exhales softly as she asks, "What was in that?"

"Ah," Moira seems to be considering humoring her, which she hadn't really expected either. Silk and razor wire. "An answer for an answer then, rabbit?" There is a brief pause, in which she thinks the other may reconsider, before that low, lilting timbre advises, "Painkillers, an anti-inflammatory, and a mild neuro-blocker. It will make it a touch more difficult for you to lie if you feel so inclined. You may yet opt not to answer, though I cannot recommend that."

Her hand has curled in the front of a soft, button-down shirt, and she breathes out slowly, the part of her that came up in Junkertown already knowing the answer before she speaks it, "If I don't answer?"

"That was more than one question, but I shall allow it. This once," the geneticist advises smoothly. It's their game, after all. She knows the rules. There's an uncomfortable honesty to the words when Moira advises lowly near her ear, "I don't want to hurt you, rabbit."

 _But I will, if I have to_ \- the words that aren't said linger between them.

She lifts dark eyes to the other's, searching their scarlet and blue. Knowing the taller woman means it. Dimly aware that there's a sound in the periphery as they sit in silence, Jack emits a quiet noise in the back of her throat and brings to the other's attention, "Your timer is going off, babe."

Moira's head turns toward one of the workstations, and there's a second in which it's just them, really. Just them kicking around the lab on a weeknight because the geneticist's schedule doesn't allow for dinner and they want to see one another. The expression that flickers over those sharp features then is familiar, as if the other may confide something important to her in that moment, but instead she finds herself guided down to lay upon the exam table with the low directive, "Stay here for me. I will not be long."

Cold fingertips take a moment to adjust the sweater around her before Moira bends to place a light kiss to her temple. Gentle. As if knowing this may be the last opportunity for them to be. Jack knows that there isn't any running this time. This isn't her apartment. This isn't an enemy waiting for her in the dark, it's an all-too-familiar devil at her door, knowing that it will be allowed in and that if it isn't, there's always breaking the window. It's funny, she thinks. She could try to leave. There have been innumerous warnings. Bix. The Soldier. The repetitions of _this woman is dangerous_ confided to her over and over again as if she couldn't see it. _She knows_. 

_She's known for a while now_. 

It's just that _that's not all that Moira is_. And she's fairly certain that the taller woman means it. That she doesn't _want to_ hurt her. But that she will, and Jack suspects, _badly_ if she must. It wouldn't be the first time that has happened. _Though not with Moira._

It flicks on in her brain in an instant when she registers the scent of metal. It's funny how that happens sometimes. Jack hates it. For some reason it reminds her of being in the dark, holed up in a ratty bunker where the omnics took her. _Of another Junker beside her, patched up when he got here. Just enough to keep him alive. She's been listening to him scream for hours now. The human body is capable of withstanding amazing things if there's a medic patching it up in between._

_She smells blood and burning metal. What would she tell him if she could? That he's a fucking idiot for telling them what they want to know. That it could mean they lose everything. In her mind's eye she sees Jaeden, if only for a moment, hand curved around the hilt of a glaive, her hazel eyes wild and teeth bared as she shears through a Bastion unit in one blow. There's a part of her that knows Jaeden isn't coming. Can't. It's what they want, to cut the head of the snake - sever the head that wears the crown. There's a part of her that prays she will anyway._

_Hope springs eternal._

God, she smells blood and burning metal. 

She's dimly aware that her feet have found the floor near the exam table, and while she probably shouldn't move - it doesn't appear that Moira has noticed yet or perhaps the other doesn't care. The lab doors are likely locked anyways at this rate. There's no running. Not that she would. She just can't be out here anymore, so she makes her way into the office and drops down onto the couch cushions. The soft sound of music helps.

There's the dim memory of after. Knowing that there aren't any scars but that everything _hurts anyways_. The feeling of her fingers snapping once, then over and over again is a dull echo, and she curls them as if not certain they're still there. Of her father insisting that they fly her to Melbourne and her mother insisting that they _could not_. Because her mother is on a watch list. Like Jaeden, who still hasn't come to see her. Who she doesn't realize yet, won't be coming to see her at all.

Jack turns on her side on the couch, her thoughts spinning in her head like shards of metal, like the distant sounds of Junkers screaming. She should be angry about this, she realizes. About Moira. About the meds. It's just that she knows at least twelve people who would have done the same thing only less gently. Waimarie Vargas is one of them.

She's known who Akande was since her second trip to Rialto. She doesn't know how Moira fits into it, but this is showing her just how far it goes. _The secrets we keep._

_Her mother is in the tin trailer farthest from the house. The man tied to the chair wears the olive fatigues of the Australian military. There's a machine rag balled up and stuffed in his mouth. The others around him are dressed like her mother, rust-red fatigues and salvaged body armor. She jumps when her mother - five and a half feet of dark, coppery skin crowned in a corona wild flaxen curls, lifts the sniper rifle and slams the butt of it into his brow, knocking the man and his chair to the ground._

_"I'll say it again. Where is the encampment?" the voice comes from the right, she can't see who it is._

_When the door opens suddenly, she's looking up into the dark eyes of her mother. A directive, the lift of a chin toward the other trailer, "Get back in the house. Now."_

She almost jumps out of her skin when cold fingertips touch her shoulders, night-dark eyes slipping open. Her hands are shaking, she realizes with a dim sort of fascination, feeling her breath shudder in her chest. 

Thankfully, _mercifully_ , Moira comes to rest behind her on the couch, and she simply turns toward her. Her head comes to rest in the crook of Moira's shoulder and neck, the familiar scent of bergamot and burnt amber on the taller woman's skin mingling with cigarette smoke and antiseptic. It lends all of this a normalcy that it probably shouldn't have, and her fingertips pick lightly at the other's shirt idly. Cold fingertips thread into her hair, gentle, but with the reminder of sharp edges.

They stay like that for a few minutes before Moira prompts in a low voice, smooth as silk and lilting, "Start with who was there for me."

"There were three of them," Jack answers in a more languid cadence, her palm finding its place above Moira's hip, where she traces slow circles with a thumb. "The one in the visor, Soldier 76. Mercy. Tracer. In the living room. I hit him when he startled me, it went from there. All I wanted was _to get out_ , but I couldn't get far enough." She clears her throat softly, asking despite knowing the answer already, "What will happen if I stop answering?"

"I think you know already, rabbit," the taller woman answers back, though shifts forward to place a feather-light kiss to Jack's upper lip, where she knows a scar curves faintly into the skin above. "Don't. Neither of us would enjoy what followed. I meant what I said in the lab, I have no desire to hurt you."

"Not tonight."

"Not tonight," comes a low confirmation, the corner of the other's lips twitching up ever-so-slightly. It's a curious thing to see a person beneath so many layers of armor slowly peeled back, still glittering and bright and dangerous at the core. Curious. Honest in a way she doubts that many are.

"The Soldier...I think his name is Jack, too," she muses with a yawn, and has to consciously invest in not slipping her hand beneath the other's shirt to feel skin on skin. Shifting minutely closer instead, she confides, "They zip-tied me to a chair in the kitchen, which - while _charming_ \- isn't really my favorite way to get about it."

There's a faint pressure beneath her jaw at that, her dark eyes falling half-lid, and she could swear that what curls the corner of the other's lips now is the barest hint of a smirk.

Jack clicks her tongue lightly, lifting her chin a scarce measure in response. "He wanted to talk about my supposed involvement with Talon. Showed me some pictures of us in Rialto. With Akande. Said that the Sombra collective had been using my phase technology in the field. That I needed to make better friends. That Overwatch could be that for me."

"I told him I was _with you_ and I didn't have any idea what he was talking about." Brushing her nose to the other's freckled one lightly, she places a light kiss to the cool, soft curve of Moira's lips and watches coppery lashes flutter despite themselves, so she does it again. When mismatched eyes settle to hers, the one deeply blue and the other vividly red, she confesses quietly, "I know. You know that, right? That I know about Talon."

While nothing is done about it, a sharp edge appears in those eyes at the statement, and the taller woman asks in that silk-wrapped-wire voice, "What is it that you think you know, rabbit?"

Aware that there are one of two ways that this ends, her words like the paw of an animal on the pressure plate of a trap beneath the leaves, Jack murmurs back, "Enough." It's the truth. "The last project Akande gave me was unjamming a compact fire cylinder." 

Her fingertips brush lightly, tracing an idle pattern on the other's side. "Whoever told him to call it that was smart, but I've seen _a lot of scrap_ , and I know what the firing mechanism on a concussion gauntlet looks like."

" _Rud cliste_ ," the words are unfamiliar, but there's a subtle note of pride in them that makes her fingertips a little warm. " _Ró-chliste do do chuid féin._ " A cool hand lightly grasps her chin, and the hair on the back of her neck rises for a moment as a sharp nail trails the line of her jaw, "What am I going to do with you?"

** Clever thing  
** Too clever for your own good

"What are you?" Jack asks back quietly, dark eyes half-lid when the other's touch draws back down. This is the hard part. There aren't that many options for what to do in this situation. It really falls to favourable or unfavourable.

Mismatched eyes meet hers, calculating and clinical for an instant, the scales being weighed carefully before the other speaks, "I suspect, rabbit. That you and I will be in Rialto in the morning, but it will depend on several factors, some of which I am unable to directly influence at this time." It's honest, if not what she wanted to hear. "I wish you had told me prior, though I cannot say with any authority that it would have made a difference."

"Yeah, I'll just slip that into casual conversation next time," she counters with a soft sound, turning to murmur near Moira's cheek. "Hey babe. How was work today? Commit any sweeping breaches of international law? How's war crimes?" Jack clicks her tongue softly at that, confirming with more seriousness, "My mother was in the A.L.F. I know enough to keep my mouth shut and my head down, and to say thank you when I collect my checks. I'm trying to make credits, not get sent home in a box."

There's a husky chuckle at that, one that almost returns normalcy to their evening again, and Moira asks in a smooth cadence, "Can I trust you to remain where you are while I contact Akande?"

A low sound of amusement escapes her, dark eyes flicking toward the other's as she simply slides her hands under that shirt, nothing untoward, but needing the contact of skin on skin at the moment. Resting her features to Moira's collarbone, she draws in the scent of burnt amber and bergamot once more, exhaling slowly as she whispers, "Where would I even go, babe?" 

Her cheek nestles there, to the soft fabric and the warm skin beneath, as she points out, feeling exhausted, tired to the bones and marrow of a sudden, "I came here first, didn't I?"

The coolness of an amaranth-tinted hand comes to rest, curved at the nape of her neck to cradle her near. It's followed by the lightest peck atop her head, breath stirring in her hair as the taller woman holds her near. There's a distinctly pleased and yet subtly bemused facet in that low timbre that isn't lost on her, the lilting observation of, "You did. To me."

Her eyes slip closed of their own volition, that languid feeling back, trying to pull her down into a welcome darkness this time. Her voice sounds thick in her own ears, drowsy, and all she feels is warm, wrapped in bergamot and burnt amber, "Call him from here."

"Why?" the timbre is patient, the taller woman hasn't moved yet, the warmth still there.

Her own voice murmurs like leaves in an autumn wind, quiet and seeking of the sun while it's there. She's too tired to care how it sounds, "I don't want to be alone."

"Shh, rabbit." 

Another, lighter kiss atop her head. 

Dimly as sleep finally takes her, she hears the sound of a comm being activated. A rich, low accent conversing with someone else in a hushed timbre.

The warmth doesn't leave her. 

No. Not this time.


	19. hold your breath, play dead, ready, set, no

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ** Making bad decisions for fun and profit?  
> ** Violence/Smut  
> ** Authors who can't wait to write Junkertown

It is the natural progression of things, at times, that they have to get worse before they get better.

_Only through conflict do we evolve._

Akande is fond of saying that. If it's true, she's tired of being in the goddamn crucible.

It is the seventh day of her involuntary housing in a warehouse at the edge of Oasis, overlooking red cliffs on the desert horizon. The bunk she rooms in is small, but functional. It has a cot, a sink, and a small bathroom. The fingernail marks near the door indicate that it has been used before, perhaps in not altogether different capacity.

She starts every day the same way. Wake up. Run through drills, utilizing her mattress as a punching bag since her normal one is seven feet tall with impossibly wide shoulders, and currently navigating the upper echelon of Talon politics instead of beating her ass into a training mat several days a week. Eat the rations they bring to the room, which aren't bad, per say. It's better than some of the food they have in Junkertown. Fresh fruit. Vegetables. At one point, some sort of drink made with beets that she's nominally certain Akande put them up to. 

After breakfast, she spends an hour or two working loose the wall panel behind her cot until the sun crests over the cliffs, which is when they usually come along to retrieve her for additional questioning. She sits in silence at the metal table until they return her to the bunk. Work on the panel until lunch. Steal anything that isn't nailed down and is unnoticeable enough to sneak into her pockets, her shoe, cheeked in the back corner of her mouth.

Contingency plans are important. Her misadventures near the omnium taught her that. A nap in the afternoon, and they'll come to question her again before dinner. Then up until two in the morning on moonlit nights or in the dim light afforded by the adjacent bathroom, building a portable signal jammer and a back-up comm unit since they took hers away when she arrived. 

By the end of the first week, she has a panel loose in the bathroom and another behind the cot, and has accumulated three days worth of dry food, a key card, a lighter, two sets of handcuff keys that no one has been brave enough to report missing, five cigarettes, and a motley assortment of wires, batteries, circuits, and metal that don't look necessarily important. But god knows the devil is in the details.

Before she turns in, she carves another little line into the mirror with a chip of metal. Today marks seven days. Which means nine have passed since she took the little Overwatch chip down to Moira's laboratory and turned it over, battered and bruised both physically and in her pride. The former is healing well. It would heal better if they would let Moira in to see her, but that isn't exactly in the cards for either of them right now. 

When she had turned herself over voluntarily, the first two days? Cake.

Because those first two days, Akande had remanded her to the relative comfort of Moira's house, under admittedly loose supervision. Turns out it's fairly easy to keep an eye on someone if you're spending lazy mornings in bed with them. Who knew?

_Hands twisted in the sheets to hold onto something. Tangling in red hair when that doesn't help. Warm breath in her ear. Warm hands other places._

_Don't think about that right now,_ she thinks to herself as she looks in the mirror. _It's not going to help._

What she has gathered regarding her current predicament is...not favorable. She mulls it over in silence, standing in front of the mirror, her dark eyes locked on her own reflection and disliking what she sees there. It has been seven days since she arrived in this...well. Cell. Since then then she has learned a vast amount of things in rapid succession. 

One: That Moira O'Deorain sits on the Inner Council of Talon, which Akande is the head of. She knew the second part. And she knew that Moira was...entangled with the organization somehow, but not in what capacity. Inner Council is news.

Two: That another member of the Talon Council is utilizing the recent altercation between Jack and Overwatch to threaten Moira's position.

Three: That whoever tipped Overwatch off regarding her involvement with the doctor had played their hand well enough to make it look like she has some connection there, which would have worked better if they hadn't knocked the shit out of her. Good thing about that first punch. Not good enough, however, to negotiate her release.

Four: That the Council has voted on her status and voted in favour of an extended vetting and interrogation at three to two. That it failed a vote of two to three on whether or not that interrogation could utilize violence as a means of seeking the truth.

Five: That if she has to spend too many more days in this fucking bunk, she's going to lose her mind.

Her escorts arrive like clockwork, always on time and with the sound of boots marching down the hallway. Two guards every day, leading her through labyrinth of halls to a brushed steel room that overlooks the same red cliffs.

It has been five days since she ceased to speak entirely. Which makes it...she thinks on it as she drops into the chair behind a stainless steel table, threading her hands through the back of it so they can re-fasten the handcuffs...four days since the interviews had gotten a little...she'd call it enthusiastic. 

Her lip curls back faintly when the omnic steps into the room with his datapad to take the seat across from her. Three days since he was so frustrated by her silence, the dull tapping of her fingertips atop the table, that he had thrown the fucking datapad at her things and had gotten out of hand at a breakneck speed. The escorts had jerked her up off of him the third time she slammed her hand into his face so hard that her knuckles split back open. So had the plastic of his face-plate. 

There's still dried blood flecked on the floor in the corner, and combined with the cool, dry air that pushes through the vents and the constant of sheet metal around them, it reminds her of Junkertown. Probably not the best headspace to be in for another _interview_ , but fuck this and fuck him. 

His name is Max, or at least that's what he calls himself. He has an American accent, is lacquered in a dark blue, and currently looks like a villain from a children's cartoon. The angry spiderweb fracture on his faceplate has been stapled together by someone who either doesn't know or doesn't care how to properly fix omnics, and his left optic is still loose, spins a little when he looks at her. 

This starts the same way that it always does. The same cool, calm questions repeated over the course of hours. When she doesn't answer, it inevitably escalates, until the omnic slams his metal and plastic hands down on the table and goes about a show of mediocre force that must certainly have worked on someone else at least once for how much he depends on it. She suspect whoever employs him is _displeased_ with his lack of progress. 

It's a perfect storm, really.

Jack's eyes remain half-lid as he carries on, slivers of darkness that look out past him onto the red cliffs in the distance. They stretch out over the horizon as far as she can see, sometimes brilliant and shimmering when the sun beats down directly on them, sometimes shrouded in the deep purple-red of cloud cover. They remind her of the cliffs behind the tin trailers in Junkertown, where Pao and Kamaka, Timoti and Tama must be right now. 

This fucker's questions are always about Moira. Nothing to do with Junkertown or Oasis work. Nothing about limited phase technology, cloaking, even the research she's been doing on omnium-synthesized titanium. The questions are odd and decidedly specific. Moira. How did they meet? How long have they been seeing each other? What kind of cologne does she wear? What is her favorite color? 

That's how they get you. She realized early on that he was attempting to develop some sort of baseline. Coax from there. He asks the little things. The things that _you're fond of_. The ones that make you tempted to tell more, until you risk spilling things that you shouldn't. Her refusal to answer any of his questions, no matter how mundane, infuriates him consistently.

Her decision not to speak was conscious. If the geneticist or Akande had come down to speak with her, she may have. But she hasn't seen Moira and she knows why. It's the same reason that she stays quiet. Sometimes keeping distance is another way of keeping something _safe_ , and if they don't know the extent to which she and the other are involved, it will be more difficult to use her to their own devices. She knows that. She knew that when they were breaking her fingers in a shitty little bunker outside the omnium, looking for anything they could use against Jae. 

She knows it now. 

History repeats itself.

And what does she know about Moira? 

Certainly nothing that _should_ implicate the other. A fair amount, regardless. They flicker like bits of metal in the red earth outside Junkertown, glinting brightly when she loses focus, which is more and more frequent the longer these interviews go on. They drift in and out, bits of memory. Things that are important in ways that she feels, deeply, despite their mundane nature. 

Moira tastes like whiskey and mint. Moira smells like bergamot and burnt amber, sometimes like cigarette smoke. Jack knows how she likes her coffee. How peaceful she looks painted in amber, illuminated by the early morning sun through the curtains, fiery hair a mess from sleep. The colour of her eyes when she wakes up, a sliver of perfect blue for the one and a dark wine that warms to scarlet in the light for the other. How she sounds when she's trying not to make a sound, her hands tangled in Jack's hair. The way she sounds when she talks about home - _Glendalough, down in Wicklow_.

When her attention drifts back toward the conversation at hand, Max has her comm unit out and is showing her a meticulous log of interactions. He reviews call times from late in the evening, some for a few minutes, but others for an hour or two, sometimes more. She knows what those are. Late nights when one of them was in the lab or the machine shop, when Moira was overseas on a conference or when Jack was in Rialto. When they find the time where they can grasp it, whiled away while working on this project or that with the murmur of a familiar voice in one ear. 

She misses their talks. She misses talking at all, really. 

Max is on about missing messages now, and even if she was speaking to him, she wouldn't know what to _fucking tell him_ about it. She hadn't been the one to delete them. She flicks a look back at the red cliffs in the distance. Dimly wonders if Moira has told them anything. If they know what a bad pick she was for interrogation from the start. 

Exclude the events at the omnium.

Junkers don't tap.

_Well._ The corner of her mouth curls faintly. _They do sometimes. Only it's under vastly different circumstances._

The hint of a smile that curls the corner of her lips at the thought doesn't go unnoticed, and it must have been sufficient to get under his chassis, because of a sudden, those optics are up in her face again. When a metal hand comes to rest on her shoulder, breaking the cardinal rule of _don't fucking touch me_ yet again, he squeezes hard enough to leave a bruise in his wake. 

Her arms are twined behind her and through the back of the chair, handcuffed at the wrists. That doesn't stop her from slamming her head into his face so hard it cracks the chassis a second time, the impact splitting the skin at her temple. Blood trickles down her face now, copper and salt on the tip of her tongue. She lifts her chin at him in a silent challenge, lip curled back to reveal teeth in what is far less a smile and more a showing of them. 

He's pulled out of the room when he swings back an arm, and Jack watches him the whole time, sinks into the chair as easily as can be. Her shoulders settle back to the cool metal and her dark eyes lift back toward the horizon in the distance, searching those red and purple cliffs as if they may hold a secret for her to discover. 

Akande comes to visit her in the afternoon.

It surprises her how delicate he can be with hands so large they could easily grasp her whole head if he wanted to, his touch gentle when he probes a bruise here, tips her chin up to better look at the cut to her temple. Tearing open an alcohol wipe, he cleans the blood from her face, and she flinches only when the sting sinks in, though waits quietly while he applies a small adhesive bandage to keep the cut sealed shut.

The instructions he provides are simple, a low noise made in his chest as he confirms, "When you do this, you should hit from here."

His fingertips touch lightly to the crown of her head, "Never here." Then the temple as if to show her what he means, "Unless you intend to render _yourself_ unconscious."

"Thanks, Dad," she replies drily, her voice a little rough from disuse as her dark eyes shift from the view out the window to his features for the first time since he's arrived. 

His knuckles bump to her chin lightly, a familiar gesture between them by now. Almost brotherly. Then his arms drop to his sides and he circles around to unlock the handcuffs, advising as he does, "Also. I do not recommend headbutting omnics. They are made of metal."

"Oh, thank fuck," Jack breathes as she threads her arms from out of the back of the chair, grunting softly at how stiff and sore her shoulders feel as she carefully stretches. Cracking her knuckles, she wrinkles her nose when a muscle here or there is tense from sitting like she has for so long. Finally, with one last stretch, in which she hears a vertebrae or two pop, she folds her arms on the table before her and rests her chin there comfortably. "I take everything back, I like you again."

"How are you holding up?" Akande asks as he takes the seat beside her once more, voice sincere enough. He rests an elbow on the table, posture easy as he leans forward slightly. 

"How do you think?" is what she answers back smoothly, a brow arching slightly before it pulls at her temple and she flinches slightly again. Dark eyes half-lid as she looks at him sidelong, she elaborates, "You threw me into budget prison and I have to listen to these assholes ramble about my comm all day." 

Her voice takes on a dry note as she asserts, "I feel feverish. You should let me see a doctor."

Akande eyes her for a moment before determining that it's a joke, at which he chuckles, a warm sound that rumbles pleasantly in his chest, "I am pleased to see you have not lost your sense of humor."

Bending her wrists slightly as if to test the joints, Jack inquires conversationally, "I take it that the handcuffs coming off doesn't mean I've been exonerated?"

"Not yet. Though I have faith that it shall not be much longer," Akande answers back, sinking into his chair a measure as he observes her. She sees him look up toward the corner, then assert bluntly, "Your loyalty is admirable, though your reticence to speak is being used to prolongue the process. It has not gone unnoticed, or unappreciated."

When her eyes follow his, she sees a small, white-pink skull emblazoned on the front of the camera and tilts her head subtly, dark gaze full of questions when she looks back to him. The first and foremost of which is, "You knew that I knew all this time, didn't you?"

"I did," Akande answers, smooth and resonant, the truth of it in his expression. "You have a curious nature. It is one of the many things that I have come to appreciate about you." This is almost casual, much like their conversations in Rialto. It's relieving, despite the circumstances. "I had intended to integrate you with far less to do about it. The best laid plans, Jack."

She watches him from where she is, chin still resting atop her arms and eyes half-lid.

"Tell me what you have gathered thus far from your time here," Akande requests then, the easiness to his posture still there. His dark eyes are knowing as he observes, "Aside from half my warehouse hidden behind a panel in the wall."

That surprises her, dark eyes blinking once as she meets his gaze. But she answers anyways, "That you and Moira are on the Inner Council of Talon. That someone is pressing her for some reason or another, and using my little boxing match with Overwatch to try to tie it all together. I don't know how or why I fit into the picture."

"It is like a chessboard," he observes, rapping a knuckle on the table to get her attention. "There are many pieces of which you are now one. Sooner than I would have cared for. But there nonetheless." He pauses then, mulling over his words before he advises, "You can only move so many pieces so brazenly without overplaying your hand or disrupting the board."

"You're rooting them out," is all she says.

"I am rooting them out," Akande confirms; his dark eyes carry a certain intensity when he holds her gaze. "Only through conflict do we evolve. It is as true in Oasis as it is in Junkertown. As it was in Numbani. This is the true nature of all things. It is a delicate time for Moira. And for Talon. Though she is hardly the easiest target one could decide upon." 

"It is not dissimilar to chess," the easy smile returns to his features once more at that, and his knuckles tap her chin once more in emphasis. "You come at the king, you better not miss. But it is safest to avoid the queen entirely."

There's a distinct pause, before he tacks on, "And the pawn by proxy, I suppose."

"God, you are _such a dick_ ," Jack murmurs softly in return, a little sound of amusement escaping her as she sinks back into the chair and folds her arms over her chest. Holding his gaze, she asserts, "I'm at least a rook. The cornerstone of any good terrorist organization has to be the only motherfucker who knows how to fix the coffee machine."

That elicits a loud snort from him, a smile that he can't quite hide as he looks at her, "A rook then." Then with an appraising look over her, "I am curious, Jack. How much of a distraction could you provide with what you have hidden away in the wall like a magpie? If I asked it of you?"

That catches her attention. "How much of a distraction do you need?"

"One sufficient enough to bring this to a sudden conclusion," he elaborates slowly, tapping his pointer and middle finger atop the table. "There are number of troublesome...let us call them bishops, on the board. I need to know which of them is the current thorn in my side. To remove it from mine. Yours. Hers. They know my habits well enough to predict some moves. You are the wildcard. It is why these..." he gestures toward the door as if to indicate the omnics that left, "Gentlemen are pressing you so hard at current. Within the limitations they were provided. They believe you have information that we both know you do not."

He checks the camera once more, the white-pink skull reflecting in his eyes a moment before he looks back toward her. His request is interesting, "I want you to breach containment or attempt your best at it. I do not care how. But I believe it will incite them to show their hand, well before that becomes more dangerous than it is now."

She taps to ten on the top of the table, one measured sound at a time, as she mulls it all over. All of the ways that this could go wrong. All of the ways it may just work. There are a myriad of possibilities, and some resonate with her more than others. Sinking back in her seat then, she lifts her chin in a nod toward him and says, "Let me see her first. I don't care how, as long as those assholes aren't around for it."

"And if I do this?" Jack searches his gaze then, dark eyes against equally dark. "When it's over, I want in. No half-measures. I don't need to know all of your secrets, but I need to know enough not to trip into this bullshit again." 

Then, as if it were an afterthought, the Junker points at him, "And I want to know what the fuck was stuck in the firing mechanism for your gauntlet."

"Essentially? Lava," he retorts with a chuckle. "Courtesy of Torbjorn Lindholm. And you will be in. No half-measures." Akande adds as a matter of note, "That means training three times a week."

"Moira doesn't train three times a week," Jack points out pragmatically.

"Moira doesn't get visits from Soldier 76 in her office," he counters with a grin. "He would not dare."

She narrows her eyes faintly at him, attempting to discern whether or not he's fucking with her about it, then crosses her arms over her chest, "How do you feel about property damage?"

"The building is immaterial." At least he's honest.

They talk about it like they're discussing where to go for lunch.

She confirms with certainty, doing some rapid calculations, "You're going to lose - at minimum - whoever you send to pick me up in the morning. Maybe more. Ordinance isn't always an exact science." At the brief surprise that touches his features, she pre-empts, "I'm not telling you where it is. It'll be gone in two days. That's how much time I need."

"You should leave tomorrow, pull anyone essential with you," Jack advises, her jaw setting subtly. She adds begrudgingly, "That motherfucker has been waiting for an excuse to beat the shit out of me. You're out of the building? He's going to do it. It'll look like enough incentive for me to try a cut and run."

Akande doesn't look as if that's an eventuality he enjoys, particularly, but he accepts it. When he holds out his hand to shake hers, she takes it, hers all but swallowed up in his. When he sinks back once more, he nods toward the camera and then turns to her. She watches the skull icon on its face fade in the periphery of her vision.

"How's she doing, anyway?" Jack asks with a vague frown, slipping them back into a more normal conversation.

"Angrier than a nest of fire ants," Akande answers honestly, a deep sigh escaping him at that. He emits a low sound, leaning forward to adjust the edge of the adhesive at her temple and smooth the border. "She is concerned about...how did she put it." He snorts softly, then mimics an Irish accent in the _worst possible way_ , "The state of you."

A laugh escapes her at that, before mischief starts to creep back in. Lifting her chin in a slight gesture, more than a little cocky, Jack answers back, "Tell her that my ears are cold and I need her to warm them up. She'll like that."

There's a bit of a grin that cracks across her coppery features now, and she leans forward slightly to confide amusedly, "She'll fucking hate it. Tell her for me anyways."

He chuckles again, the distant storm of laughter deep and resonant.

God, she hasn't smiled in _days_. 

\--- 

They don't check on her at night. That's the mistake you make when you assume that because your prisoner is sleeping with the Inner Council, she isn't still trying to get the fuck out. To be fair, she wouldn't be if Akande hadn't asked her to, but still. Contingency plan. 

She's sitting on the floor in the bathroom, assembling a detonation mechanism for a homemade explosive device when she hears a low, lilting voice from near the doorway intone, "Hello, rabbit."

When she jumps at the sound of it, she almost touches two of the wires and _that would be real fucking bad, holy shit_. 

"Jesus Christ," Jack breathes out slowly, her heart hammering in her chest as she flicks a look down at the tech in her hands and then back up to the tall, slender silhouette in the doorway, one of the other's shoulders leaning to the doorframe. Moira looks simultaneously calculating and _far more smug_ than someone should who almost just _blew them the fuck up_. "Maybe not while I'm literally assembling _a fucking bomb,_ babe."

She slides the loose panel in the bathroom wall back with one hand, finishing pinning down the wires, and sets the makeshift explosive _very carefully_ behind it before sliding it back, then washes her hands to scrub off chemicals and powder, bits of metal. 

When that tall frame steps behind her, there's an undeniable tension to it, wire-tight and entrenched in the lean musculature that she feels beneath the soft, black shirt at her back as those hands come to rest on her hips. There's an undeniable tension, and when the other's thumbs slip beneath the hem of her shirt to brush the skin, and her eyes meet scarlet and blue in the mirror, it's no secret between them that it wants to be worked out. And god, this isn't the place. It's not at all.

Fuck it.

She turns around after her hands are dried and the hand towel has been set on the sink, only for a cool, lavender-tinted hand to curve beneath her jaw almost instantaneously, mismatched eyes searching hers with a decided intent. Moira tips her head toward the other room without a word, then walks her slowly there by it, step by step, holding her gaze the entire time and then simply guiding her back down onto the cot. 

Moira tastes of whiskey and mint, always, inexplicably, kisses her slow and fierce in a way that leaves her lips tingling and feeling bruised even as that lean, lanky frame settles over her. It's not gentle. That's not in the cards right now. Not in the way her shoulders are pressed down into the mattress or how her nails scrape the pale, freckled skin beneath that shirt. It's discarded soon enough. Pale at the best of times, Moira is silvered in the moonlight through the window and her freckles pewter, and while her eyes are dark, their colour is _vivid_.

"I missed you," is what's breathed into the shell of her ear, the accent low and rich and rolling like the green hills of an island she's only seen in vids. It's an ironic thing to say before you bite someone _that fucking hard_ , but it's very them, and when she sucks in a breath, arching up into Moira for the effort, there's a low sound of satisfaction above her. Another, lighter though yet sharp nip to the column of her throat, the skin still stinging, before the other directs, "Be quiet for me, rabbit."

"God, I don't-" Jack starts to say, only to cut off in a strained sound when a warm hand slides between them and her back arches up again. Her breathing is so fucking hard already, and it's all she can do when that hand slips lower still, curving along her inner thigh _not to make a fucking sound_. "This is _such a bad idea_."

Those scarlet and blue eyes, dark already, flick up to hers for an instant, and all Moira says, voice decidedly low and husky, is, "Did I request your opinion?" before a sharp nip finds its way to her upper lip. _No. No you most certainly did not,_ she muses, _Because you already know how much I fucking like this._ Moira knows. She also knows there's a word she can use if she wants to stop, but she's not going to fucking use it.

There are going to be bruises on her hips where the other's fingertips were before. Other places. The familiar blue-black bloom of ones being left on her throat, how their edges will fade to softer blue, then green, framed in hints of yellow and purple before they disappear entirely.

She catches Moira by the jaw, coppery fingertips stark against a much paler complexion, and the breath almost goes out of her again at the expression _that little move_ earns her. The slow shift of mismatched eyes from the curve of her lips to her eyes, a haughtiness at the action, as if the sharp lines of those features were saying _how dare you_. She searches that gaze, notes the way the rim of scarlet and blue around those eyes is slowly become less and less, and directs in return, "No marks."

There's displeasure on those features at that, Moira's voice husky and rough around the edges as the other counters, "I will attend them before I go."

Those ocean-and-blood eyes search hers regardless this time, waiting this time.

This isn't lazy mornings spent in bed. 

This is over a week of constant fucking bullshit simmering beneath the surface. 

She lifts her chin in a nod of concession, only to tangle a hand in red hair when the devil's mouth finds its way alongside her neck once more. There's no objection now, only a shaky exhalation and biting down on her own lip when the hand between them slides up from its place on her inner thigh and the pad of a fingertip glides through her like it's nothing and that's... _shit._ She feels that from where that touch is up, nerves sparking in tandem with another crook of those fingers.

Her head falls back to expose her throat, which the other seems intent to take full advantage of, and she's nominally certain that she's going to bite through her fucking lip again before the night is through, a low sound made in her throat and quelled already.

"Well," there's a low voice near her ear, smoke and whiskey and warm breath as teeth scrape the shell of it. "They are going to know you were thinking about me when they tend the sheets, aren't they?"

"God," Jack breathes out, an arm around the taller woman and her fingernails biting into the skin between the other's shoulders reflexively, "I fucking _hate_ you."

A husky chuckle sounds near her ear at that, and a lavender hand comes to press firmly over her mouth with little warning, other than a quiet," Shh. You have to be quiet, rabbit."

She's not good at quiet. Not in any context, and certainly isn't when Moira leverages in with a thigh and then presses in with a firm stroke forward instead of back, sliding into her with a smooth motion that makes her back arch and toes curl, a low and wholly indecent sound made against the palm of the other's hand. God, she knows exactly what she's fucking doing. Thank fucking god. 

So it goes, as rough as they can get away with, tangled in the coarse sheets of a too-small bed on the edge of Oasis. She becomes intimately familiar with the way the moonlight picks out the pale contours of Moira's back, silvers them in a monochrome play, the tense and release in lean musculature beneath every time there's a shift forward, like a wave crashing onto welcome shore.

When it all comes to a head. When she's close and Moira can tell she is, they slow their pace, a soft hushing sound breathed into her ear as she's guided over the edge, her face turned into the side of the other's neck as she breathes it out as slowly as she can. And then all there is is the scent of bergamot and burnt amber, sinking back into coarse sheets, all too aware of the pleasant, languid warmth that's settling in her bones, in her shaking fingertips.

Nestled as comfortably together as they can get on that too-small cot afterwards, Jack can feel cool fingertips curve along the side of her neck, the pad of a thumb trailing slowly up the centre of her throat. She takes that hand in both of hers, fingertips brushing lightly to a knuckle here, the edge of a sharp nail there, the smooth silver branching of the implant that reinforces that lavender skin. 

There are footsteps in the hall, and they both still quite suddenly, only to breathe a little easier when the sound trails off down the hallway in the other direction. Rounds. Silence as they fade off into the distance. 

"I appreciate the gravity of what you are doing," Moira admits after a time, low and lilting, the sharp planes of her countenance catching the silver light to illumine them in greyscale and shadow. It's matter-of-fact in the usual way, to the point. "Not many would be so willfully resistant under the same pressure. I know this is not...ideal."

Jack makes a low, indistinct sound in the back of her throat, dark eyes searching the other's to seek a flash of scarlet and blue behind copper lashes. "Fuck them," is all she says to start, the words uttered with conviction. Then, with a hesitant curiosity, "How much has he told you?"

Displeasure colours those freckled features then, clear as day despite the hour, and Moira answers back, "Sufficient enough for me to protest the methodology. There are other ways, if none so expedient, to isolate a weakness and claim an objective." With a pointed look in the direction of the adjacent bathroom, "Where did you learn to build explosives, Jacqueline?"

"Jamison Fawkes," she answers with a little grin at that, remembering the other's commentary on her fellow Junker previous. Dark eyes touched with a subtle delight, she clicks her tongue off the roof of her mouth and turns her head to whisper, "Tick-tock, babe."

That earns her a look she's never quite seem before, one that middles between incredulous and wholly serious as Moira asserts mirthlessly, "Another method will be found. That risk is unacceptable."

A quiet laugh escapes her, which from Moira's expression, the taller woman _does not think is funny at all_ , and Jack counters amusedly, "If at first you don't succeed..."

"You will regret finishing that sentence," there's a warning note to that low cadence now, a serious one judging by the look on that freckled countenance. 

A light kiss placed to the other's lips, Jack confides there more softly, "It will be _fine_. This isn't my first tripwire mine. It won't be the last one."

Probably. She doesn't add that.

It isn't so much a question as it is a directive when Moira insists, "You will exercise _appropriate caution_." Another displeased sound near her ear, "When matters have settled, I will be in contact if you yet wish me to be. It may be a time. I would not blame you if..."

"If you yet wish me to be?" Jack repeats with a little incredulity of her own, a soft sound of amusement chasing afterwards as she flicks a pointed look at the hand yet alongside her neck, her own fingertips still tracing lightly over the other's cooler digits before she asks, "If I what?"

A flashfire grin curls the corner of her lips as she teases, "Find another high-ranking terrorist to fool around with because I might not see you for a little while? I didn't realize we were being obtuse now." She shouldn't needle her, but drawls out with vast insincerity anyways, "Or did you mean defect to Overwatch? Spill all my secrets about how Moira O'Deorain likes her coffee black and her breath hitches just a little when y-"

The hand at her throat curves around it slightly, though there's no pressure, a glint of mirth behind mismatched eyes as Moira answers lowly, if a little firmly now, "I am not being _obtuse_ , Jacqueline. Your point is duly noted. Thank you."

"I like us," Jack answers with more sincerity, more than a little warmth. When a thumb brushes the line of her jaw for that, she turns her head and brushes a kiss to the palm of the other's hand, "I thought that was pretty obvious by now."

Those freckled features soften, if only a little. If only in a way that you have to look for. When they brush to hers, Moira's lips are cool and soft. Her dark eyes close to the touch, the familiar taste of whiskey and mint that she sinks into slowly, as if slipping into the cool, dark water after weeks of wandering the desert. It changes, for a moment, the tempo of _them_.

"Sit up for me," is what she whispers against them when they part, another gentle kiss placed Moira's lips afterwards. There's a shift, that lean frame finding its way back from her to settle on the cot as requested, leaned back so that the other's shoulders rest to the wall. She follows after, a gentle kiss finding its way beneath the line of that angular jaw to make coppery lashes flutter for a moment, her fingertips ghosting along the other's hip.

There's a moment in which she can tell Moira is starting to put together what she's up to. She knows because a soft tinge of pink shows along the cheekbones, at the sternum, starts to creep up the other's neck. There's a shift in those freckled features, their fickle moment of softness traded for something else, something that's pleased and more than a little smug.

She finds herself drawn over, long fingers combing gently through her hair to draw it back, then finding one of the black bands on her wrist to tie it for her, out of the way. They trace the line of her jaw thereafter, and she brushes a kiss to the ends of them before they retreat. When the pillow from the head of the bed is set on the floor and she sinks down on it, cushioning her knees as she kneels between Moira's own, Jack's dark eyes sweep over those angular features to drink in their expression and she observes with no small amusement, "Do you think you could possibly look more pleased with yourself?"

"Do you think you could possibly look better on your knees?" comes the response, pleasantly lilting. That gets her. She feels the hint of heat beneath her skin, knows that a hint of rose is dusting over her cheekbones in the silvery light, more prominently when a knuckle brushes the line of her jaw and then tucks under her chin to tilt it up just so. Her eyes meet the other's, sapphire and scarlet searching hers in the dark. 

There's a smooth current to her voice, promising as she answers back, "Ask me again in a minute."

Her thumb brushes over a spot low on the plane of the other's hip, feeling a little jump in the musculature there. She remembers that one. Sometimes having a _very tactile memory_ has broader applications than assembling tech. She ducks to brush a kiss there, the first one chaste, the second less so as she maps the lightly freckled skin with her mouth - to wild success if the hitch in the other's breath is any indication.

When she looks back up, Moira's hand is raking through a corona of silver-struck red hair, that lean frame slumped indolently back to the wall as if this little cot in the corner of Oasis were a throne for her to rest upon. Blowing lightly on the warm, damp spot she's just left, she watches with decided satisfaction when the other's pupils dilate a little more and there's a low sound that escapes with a breath.

"How do you want this?" Jack asks then, mapping the same spot once more and feeling long fingers tangle in her hair, warm where they touch. 

An answer, that lilting voice low and husky, "Slow."

She takes it slow. 

\---- 

When the first hint of dawn creeps over the red cliffs, they are still awake, curled as comfortably together as the small bunk will allow. A freckled countenance leans in once more, and she feels the brush of cool, soft lips to her brow as the taller woman confides with decided displeasure at the fact, "I have to go, rabbit."

Her fingertips still where they are, idly tracing a pattern on the curve of the other's side. "Junkertown," is all she responds with. "That's where I'll be."

There's a brief, bemused look at that, as if Moira cannot fathom how she intends to make her way from here to there. There's no question as to how, however, only a tall frame that disentangles from hers to collect personal affects, pull on a soft black shirt, re-fasten a belt and find shoes kicked beneath the cot.

"Junkertown," is all Moira confirms at the sound of boots in the hallway once more. Warmth spreads from the other's fingertips when they come to rest alongside her throat, the bruises fading their way from beneath coppery skin.

For a moment, when that tall silhouette becomes hazy around its edges, indistinct, she very seriously considers that she may be losing her mind. But then that insubstantial darkness roils up, a miasma of black energy that vanishes as suddenly as it appeared, taking the taller woman with it. 

_Son of a bitch._

Jack stares at the place that Moira used to be for several long seconds before she throws back the blanket and stands, shaking her head as she heads toward the adjacent room to shower.

_I can deconstruct my physical form at the cellular level._

_Fucking Nightcrawler bullshit._


	20. you can find me bleeding, kicking, screaming, lost in the feeling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ** Unpleasant conversations  
> ** Foreshadowing  
> ** Violence/death  
> ** Cool guys don't look at explosions

She knows when she steps out of the shower, pulls on her clothes with a dogged air of determination, that today is the day that everything goes to hell. Closes her eyes and counts to ten, taps it on the wall beside her before her focus can stray. 

_Tomorrow will be different. The day after will be different. They will be the fire that falls after the storm today. They will be the calm after it._

When they come to take her down to the interrogation room, the interview has taken on a wholly different tone once more. She knows why. She knows it every time hands hit the table near her, though not on her yet. 

Her dark eyes never shift from the red cliffs in the distance. She's starting to notice how the clouds paint them with shadows of deep, rich purple and blue in the evenings. It's like an oil painting unfolding before her eyes, painted by one of the masters. Jack thinks that when this is all over, she would like to climb those red cliffs to the very top, like she did once the ones that overlook the salt flats back home. 

She remembers standing so far up that it felt like footsteps away from god. Which one, she doesn't know, but the salt flats stretched on - glittering in the distance - and beyond them, the silhouette of Junkertown, all rusted sheet metal and jagged edges. Beautiful.

_Home_.

One. Two. All the way to ten. Tap it on the chair. Tap it on the cuffs. Breathe in. Breathe out. 

When she's quelled the worst of it, her dark eyes snap up to his optics and she says slowly, "Anyone ever tell you that you're real shit at this?"

The open-handed blow is enough to rattle the chair. It doesn't land again until she smiles at him, slow and steady, revealing a line of teeth in bold fashion. Something chips then. She's not sure if it's on his fist or her teeth until she tastes blood in her mouth. 

Yeah. Akande's out of the building now.

"I have been wanting to _do that for days_ , Junker." 

That isn't a lie. You learn to read omnics a little better when you're friends with one, and it's not always a matter of expression. It's body language, coded similarly to theirs. It's the colours that flicker so quickly in their optics they're hard to catch before they fade. 

She spits blood in his face, watches it fleck over optics and blue lacquer alike. 

When metal fingers grasp her by the jaw, press in so tight she worries for an instant that he intends to break it, she holds his gaze. The pressure is white-hot and brittle for a long moment before he lets go. There's a chime on the comm. The camera cuts off.

"My little brother hits harder. _You want to try again_?" is what she bites out with blood on her teeth, because what crawls up and out of the recesses of her mind like creeper vine through dry red earth is Junkertown bold, as angry and brazen as it was in the Scrapyard. 

When he reaches back out, a smug flash of orange to his optics, she jerks forward suddenly and he shifts back in as close to a flinch as she's ever seen out of an omnic. The corner of her lip curls up, revealing a slip of teeth again at that, and her voice goes feather-soft as she asks, "What's the matter? You afraid I'm going to pretty up the rest of your face."

The camera stays off. 

Flashes of clarity and darkness. No one can tell you that about shit like this. That you only remember some of it, and what you remember is too bright, too brittle, cuts your hands like shards of glass when you try to hold it and digs under the skin. Cuts you even if you don't, all glittering pieces through your fingers. 

It comes howling through the cracks when you lay on your cot at night with aching bones and a split lip. The dull crack of knuckles against flesh and bone until something breaks. The ringing of a metal chair when it hits the floor and you can't break the fall, your arms twined through the back of it and cuffed together at the wrist. Fighting a fight you know that you're going to lose, because it's all that's left to do. There are boot-prints on her ribcage, on her hip. 

It hadn't been as bad as the staccato snapping of her fingers after. One at a time. Methodical. A dreadful music she has heard before.

History has a way of repeating itself.

The medic that they sent into her bunk later, a slender omnic who shook like a leaf, his optics a pale hue as he injected nanites and applied something cool to numb...not quite enough to really matter, had said there was no lasting internal damage. She hears him through the door, then the sound of footsteps headed down the hall. Away from her. She waits until they are silent for ten minutes before she levers up from the cot, stiff and bruised despite the working nanites - two of her fingers still taped together because the bones haven't fully knit back together yet.

_Lose the battle, win the war._ Akande told her that once, the third time he slammed her shoulder-first into the training mat in Rialto. He points out all the flaws in her defenses methodically, advises, _Defeat makes you stronger._

She doesn't feel stronger. But she does feel alive, and not everyone has that privilege. And if this is the cost, she will pay it. Gladly. Every time until the last. Night-dark eyes glittering in the limited light, she flicks a glance at the red cliffs in the distance. It's not hard to see where this is all headed now. They painted a good picture for her a few hours ago. How badly they want to see part of the Inner Council burn. How badly they want secrets that she has _never had_.

Jack knows where this is going. She is the man she saw in the garage when she was ten. The one with the machine rag in his mouth. The one that was battered and bruised long before the sound of a single pulse round rang out through the scrubland and the muffled _screaming in the Outback stopped_.

She has until morning. That's when this all starts again. _She has the night to work._

The signal jammer goes in the back-up comm she created, and she slips it in her ear as she paces in the bathroom. One of the cigarettes goes between her lips, and she flicks the lighter to catch the end, drawing in a deep lungful of smoke and pretending it doesn't burn against her raw throat. The comm rings. It rings again. _Pick up_. 

She calls until he does, almost twenty-five minutes later. 

"'ello?" comes the rough, reedy voice on the other end of the line.

"Jamie," her voice is rough from smoke and from shouting, dark eyes fixating on the horizon as if there may be an answer waiting for her there. It stings in her throat still when she takes another drag from the cigarette. Clattering and clanking sounds on the other end of the line, "I need a favour, mate. Can I get a pick-up in Oasis tomorrow? Got a little jailbreak and arson happening."

There's _all but a cackle_ on the other end of the line, and she hears him scramble over toward the other side of the shed, "'ey. 'ey, Roadie. It's Jack. It's Jack with the trap. Jack-out-of-the-box." He all but giggles into the comm, "Ohoho, this'll be good. Here. Here-here-here."

"What do you want?" Roadie's voice rumbles, slow and languid like molasses on the other end of the line. His respirator huffs in the background. 

Jack cuts straight to the point with him. Roadie doesn't like wasting time, and he likes it less if you can't back up your words with an appropriate number of credits, "Wolf still have that old transport he lets you use sometimes?"

"Heh..yeah," another heavy breath from the respirator. 

Here we go.

Jamie would come get her for a fucking pixie stick. 

Roadie? He's going to rake her over the coals until the price is right, and she knows it. Doesn't have time for it. 

Another drag of the cigarette, she exhales smoke slowly, glancing at her bruised reflection in the mirror, "I need a ride. Oasis. About three local tomorrow. How much?"

"Seven thousand," Roadie rumbles into the comm, a snorting huff sounding thereafter.

It'll almost tap her account, but she makes a displeased sound and asserts nonetheless, "Fine. Where am I making the transfer, mate?"

"Now it's eight," he adjusts at her easy acceptance of the projected cost.

"I know it's a big favour, mate. But it's not that big," she bites out softly, "Listen..." Jack pauses then, realization hitting her, "You want the regulator on my bike still."

A grunt of acknowledgement, "And seven."

Fuck.

She rubs the back of her hand to her cheek, grimacing as she confirms, "Go on over to the house and Kama will take it off for you. And don't let Jamie drive my fucking mecha while you're out there."

He rumbles something all but unintelligible to Jamie. Something she's sure Jamie understands, of all people, and hears a loud, "Aww, Roadie."

He'll pick her up. 

Good. It only cost her her entire savings and the regulator of her hoverbike.

Bastard.

She finishes that cigarette and lights a second one. She doesn't usually smoke, but occasionally she steals a puff from one of Moira's to be a little shit, and these are...decidedly not as good. But the call that's next is one that she is looking forward to _even less_ , and it's giving her a way to steady her nerves. 

Jack initiates the second call, one that's declined immediately, and she grimaces when a vidcall request is the response. Of course. It won't be fun for Jaeden if she doesn't get to see the reaction that she's getting. 

Exhaling slowly, she pulls up the holoscreen and settles on the floor, back to the wall as she watches the door out into the hallway in case it's opened. 

"Don't you look like right shit, princess?" the voice on the other end is a little rough-edged, but pleasantly so, matches the firm-boned countenance of the Junker Queen in the flesh. Jaeden is sprawled indolently on the throne in the Scrapyard, all leather and metal, chin resting on the knuckles of one hand as her hazel eyes sweep over the comm. She can see the crest of a blue mohawk, the sharp hazel eyes, a swathe of red paint across them to present a warlike exterior, the edges flaking slightly on tanned skin. She can see the little scar, a barely visible horizontal line on the bridge of Jae's nose where a piece of bullet ricochet had only just hit her.

Jack knows she looks like shit, though she has to commend the terrified omnic that patched her. It's not pretty, the yellowed bruises, the hints of green and rarer blue that stretch over her coppery features, most prominent on the cheekbone and in a half-cirlce of purple beneath one eye. But it's not as bad as it could be. Nothing is cut open. She can still taste blood and flecks of tooth and smoke in her mouth. _Nothing that can't be fixed._

"Thanks," Jack answers simply, taking another puff from the cigarette and then flicking the ash on the floor.

There's a long minute of silence before Jaeden leans forward, the creak of metal and leather accompanying the movement as pauldrons shift on firmly-muscled shoulders, and the other woman lifts her chin in a nod toward the vidscreen and observes, "This is fun. No wonder we don't do this shit." She sinks back in the throne once more then, asks bluntly, "Not social, is it?"

"It's not social," she confirms easily enough, dark eyes flicking over Jae's features for a moment before she confides, "I'll be back home tomorrow. Possibly with trouble following, and I need somewhere in 'town to lay low that's inside the walls. At least for a couple days. Somewhere it's easy to tell who is and isn't among the usual faces."

A dark brow arches at that, a wolfish smile curving over those features and pulling at a scar that curves from the line of Jaeden's jaw up toward the cheekbone, stopping just shy of it. That one was made with a blade. She remembers taping that up after it happened. The other woman observes, "You want to stay with me."

"Only for a few days," Jack intones slowly, carefully, wondering when the other is going to flip the tables on this conversation and suspecting that it will be sooner than later. "Plus I need you to not shoot Roadie or Jamie before tomorrow. They're my ride."

Jaeden flashes a smile then, the wolfish sort of smile she has that lets you know exactly where you stand with her. Rabbit. Wolf. Her hazel eyes glint in the hazy light through the cracks in the ceiling as she asserts, "You could beg me a little. Just for old time's sake?" Before she can say anything, those hazel eyes fall half-lid like a pleased cat's at her expression. "Tell them they can leave you at the old signal post. I'll send Tas and Maggie to pick you up."

A muscle in her jaw tenses, but she doesn't rise to the obvious bait.

"Don't look so put out, princess," the Queen draws out with that smile, because that's what Jaeden is now. The Junker Queen. Brash. Brazen. Confident. More than a little of that last one when she sinks back on her throne a bit and lifts her chin toward the vidscreen, "We'll close ranks a few days for you. You got what you wanted." Hazel eyes fall half-lid again, gleam near-amber in the light against that wolfish expression, as the other draws out, "You think I will?"

Her dark eyes hold that near-amber gaze, and her voice is smoother than she expected it to be when she replies, "No. Don't be such a shit." Pointedly shifting the topic back, she clarifies, "Tomorrow sometime. I'll send you details from the transport. And thanks, Jae."

"Don't get dead, princess," is all the other responds with, before she cuts the comm off.

She exhales slowly. 

Time to get back to work.

Early in the morning, she stands in front of the mirror once again. The cot mattress is propped up on its end, blocking a portion of the open bathroom door to form a makeshift shield for what's about to go down. They'll come to check on her soon. She can hear the slow, steady footfalls down the hall already. Tries to amp herself up for it. Work out the nerves. It's not going to work.

Her hand curls around the hilt of a makeshift weapon while she waits, counting the steps. Part of the cot's metal frame that she filed down on the wall, wrapped in strips of sheet at one end to make a handle. Crude, but effective in terms of a blade. She isn't thrilled about the potential of using it. But better to have it than not. This is vastly different than being armored within a mecha, but the principles of the matter are the same. And she hasn't been training with Akande for nothing. 

Her pack sits on the floor by her feet, packed with a few essentials. Some water. She'll need that in the desert. A secondary explosive device gingerly wrapped in a sheet to cushion it. A tin of biscuits. Half of what you'd need out of a first aid kit. She had used that already this morning, fishing the tracking chip out from under the skin of her forearm where they had placed it when she arrived, setting it on the sink. Taping the small cut shut afterwards. 

The world is a treasure trove when it needs to be. You can remove all sorts of shit from inside a wall if you know how to re-wire it afterwards. And maybe they don't leave her unsupervised for long, but it's amazing what you can get up to when your life depends on. When you know exactly what to look for and your mind races at breakneck speed for what to substitute, how to put it together.

Just ask Jamison Fawkes. 

She learned this next trick from him. 

The footsteps get closer. She inhales, exhales slowly. Count to ten. Count to ten again.

She glances from the mirror to the window.

She can see the red cliffs in the distance.

_It is like a chessboard. There are many pieces of which you are now one. Sooner than I would have cared for. But there nonetheless. You can only move so many pieces this brazenly without overplaying your hand or disrupting the board._

She does what Junkers do best.

She flips the fucking chessboard.

When the door swings open and a booted foot steps forward, the tripwire snaps with a sharp, skittering sound just seconds before the explosion rips through the entrance of the bunkroom in a single, concussive blast that shakes the warehouse. Tripwire mines. _Thanks, Jamie._

From where she stands, the wave of heat is palpable and the peppering of metal through the walls and the cot is expected. The few pieces that strike her will have to be pulled out later, a particularly large shard slicing a thin furrow in her shoulder before jutting out of the far wall, a drop of blood falling from it toward the floor.

Her hands don't stop moving, even at that, jacking the comm unit she cobbled together into the building's mainframe by use of the cluster of wires she pulled out of the wall. It takes her less than thirty seconds to kill the power on a broad scale. Another thirty to kick it back on with a low, keening whine that re-routes all of it at once into key, critical points - more deafening blasts heard in the distance as the power boxes burst in a hail of electrical arc and hot metal.

It's dark now, only the dim glow of emergency lights starting to pick up in the hallway and what little orange-red ambiance is allowed by the fires left behind by the ordinance. Removing the comm to slip it into her ear, Jack steps around the cot and into the bunkroom. The smell of burning flesh and hair turns her stomach, but she can't stop now. 

He's not quite dead. _God, the human ones are._

When she bends over him to free the gun and the comm from his waist, his metal fingers leave streaks of blue and green over her coppery skin, the power-fluid that runs like life's blood through omnics. He's trying to catch ahold, but she must have damaged something to do with his fine motor control, because with each attempt, his metallic fingers twitch and jump in a way they decidedly shouldn't. 

_Little known fact,_ she muses as she removes the gun and the keycard from their place on a latch at his waist. She rolls up her sleeves the rest of the way, looking up for a moment, and then uses the knife to crack open his chassis. _You can make a lot of things out of the power unit for an omnic._

_It's a war crime_. She knows it before she cracks the internal power unit out of place, uses the edge of the blade to sever the connections _It's a fucking war crime, Jack._

He shudders and his voicebox makes a stuttering gasp. When the last wire is cut, the light behind his optics dims slowly, in steady increments until there's nothing left. Then she jerks the unit out of his chest and tucks it in the side pouch of the pack. Priority one is getting out of here alive. Survival is a powerful instinct. 

She'll take every advantage she can get.

"Bye Max," is what she says softly, nodding toward his still form before she glances out into the corridor and down the hall. Her eyes are starting to adjust to the darkness. No one yet, although if they were willing to torture her for information, she's damned sure they're not letting her out of the building without a fight - electrical fires be damned.

Two minutes before this gets extremely dangerous. Five before there's a likelihood everyone still inside doesn't make it out. She can already smell the smoke billowing, see where it runs in wicked currents along the ceiling overhead, where it pools, trying to find a way outside. When she reaches out to touch the wall, it's hot beneath her hand, warms her palm.

It kicks her into action, reminds her of something she said to Moira once. _Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist of creating out of void, but of chaos._

And this?

All but sprinting at a breakneck speed down the hallway in the dark, her path lit only by a scarce amount of emergency lights and the flicker of flames, the smoke choking her lungs. 

This is chaos.

This is the space in which she feels Junkertown most keenly. As if the scavvers, the omnics, the wild Outback were entrenched in her bones, her heartbeat the hail of gunfire in the distance, the howling of the Queensguard inside sheet metal walls. 

It's curious what drifts in while she darts down the hall. The tin trailers beneath the red cliffs. The sound of her mother's voice. Riding hoverbikes over the salt flats, the spray glittering in her wake. Mismatched eyes as they slip open, stricken by the amber light of morning.

She feels the last one in her chest, feels it against the nerves when footsteps rattle down the hallway and she has to jerk the door open, take cover behind it. There's an ever-increasing chance, Jack realizes as she lingers on it for a moment, listening to them pass the doorway and run down the hall, that she's fallen for her. Hard. 

And this definitely isn't the place that she should be thinking this over, but it's not leaving her. _Fuck. Fuck, this is not the time, Vargas. Get your fucking shit together. Right fucking now._

She does what she absolutely should not do. 

She calls Moira's house in Rialto on the comm, knowing she isn't there. That makes this shitty but also safe. She knows that they'll be monitoring it, but she doesn't care right now. Akande told her to make it look real, and god, it's not getting any more real right now because the door she was going to use has a fire behind it and now she has to find a fucking backup.

Once the boots have passed, she slips down hall as the line clicks over to voicemail, pulls out the second charge and wires it into one of the power-boxes that didn't overload. If she's estimating correctly, when they try to cut the back-up power on in... _god, it could be really any time_...this one will take out the whole east wing and then it'll be anyone's guess who is in and who is out. 

"Hey babe," Jack breathes out, connecting the last two wires that she needs and slinging the pack over her shoulder once more. Almost there, to the side door that she needs. Which is good because she almost can't breathe now, the heat is almost _unbearable_. "I guess you aren't home right now."

She knows that Moira isn't. She'll be in Oasis. In the labs, maybe, trying to distract herself from all this bullshit with her work. Less likely that she's at home, pacing in the kitchen.

"Shit went a little sideways. I'm sure you'll hear about that soon. What I've done," Jack coughs a bit then, finding her way into another side-section of the building and jamming a chair under the door. This should be an outer wall, and if she can't get the door open, she's relatively sure she can come up with an alternative. "What I'm about to do."

Locked. The keycards should be on a separate circuit, but it's still not fucking working. Maybe she cut too much power. Maybe she overloaded the wrong lines. Doesn't matter. Plan B. She drops the pack again, pulls out the wires and cracks the wall panel to expose the wiring. There's the smell of smoke everywhere, and she's drenched in sweat, feels it in her hair and on her face and trickling down her back as she works. 

"I don't really know what to say. I've got a signal jammer on this comm, so they shouldn't be able to find it even if they're looking. Maybe. This might go real bad in about thirty seconds or so."

Her fingertips are trembling.

"It's kind of stupid what you think of when it's all down to the wire."

It is. That's true.

"Look, I... _shit_ ," Jack burns her fingers on a wire, swears lowly for a moment before reaching out to twist it anyways. She needs that fucker out enough to attach the omnic power unit, and the little black mark it's leaving on her fingertips _hurts like an absolute motherfucker_. When she pulls out the power unit, still dripping blue-green fluid - _war crime, her mind recalls helpfully for her_ \- she states, "I'm still on the line, burned my fingers."

Jacking the power unit into the wall panel, she waits to see if it powers up, looks for anything she may be able to use to pry the door open if it doesn't. _If it doesn't, you're probably going to die in here_.

"Le Fanu. Carmilla," Jack is coughing in between the words now, finds a pry bar tucked up under some tools in the corner. "You will think me cruel, very selfish. Pull it up. Try not to hate me too much when you read it. Looks like I caught feelings. I gotta go, babe."

It powers up. Thank fucking god. 

It's a mixed blessing, because about ten seconds after she opens the door and sucks in a thankful breath of dry, desert air, the back-up power whines on and she has just enough time to think _oh shit_ and dive forward onto the ground, arms thrown over her head, before the resultant blast sends a whole fuckton of glass and metal overhead. Some of it peppers her back, stings wherever it hits, but none of it seems fatal afterwards when she stands, ringing in her ears, to stumble down one of the nearby dunes toward one of the lesser used parking lots out back. 

The dry air is like heaven, hurts her lungs despite her love of it, and she can't help but to cough as she finds the controls on a hoverbike, fishes one last piece of wire from her pocket, and uses it to attach her comm. 

Muscle memory. It's easy to forget when you're living in Oasis. To forget that the hands currently burned, scraped, covered in blood - some of which is hers and some of which belongs to the omnic whose chest she ripped open - had to claw a life from the red earth outside Junkertown once. 

When the hoverbike kicks on, that's the second moment of relief, and before long, she's gunning it out into the desert at a speed that no one who lives outside of Junkertown would think was safe. 

The sun on the back of her neck feels like home. 

They shouldn't look for her out here, not out amidst the rocks and the sand in the Arabian desert. Not out toward the cliffs. 

No, it would be smarter to check the transport bays first, look for something headed toward Melbourne or Sydney. 

To check her apartment, which she's sure is getting tossed a second time sooner than later.

To check Moira's house, the lab, maybe. 

Those are all the places that would be reasonable to look first. You would have to be near mad to head out into the desert heat alone in the midday sun. It's shimmeringly hot, and she has to stop twice to drink water before she reaches the cliffs, every time her head starts to pound worse than being caught in the outskirts of a blast or having knuckles put to it seems to warrant. 

No sense in all that she's just done if it means that she dies in the desert.

Hours later, far after she's pulled up behind the red cliffs, some after Roadie has picked up the hoverbike and decided to take it with him - _nice model, he said_ -, Jack finds herself seated on the floor while Roadie drives, her shirt pulled over her head. Jamison's fingertips are surprisingly careful as he pulls another piece of glass out of her back with a pair of tweezers, drops it into a plastic cup with about a half-dozen others. He handles it the same way he does _building_ explosives. It's an attention to detail he brings to very few things.

She glances out the window on a glittering landscape of what seems endless ocean.

"I spy with my little eye...something that starts with an S," the Junker behind her remarks with delight, and she hisses a little when he has to dig for a bit of metal a little deeper than the other ones.

"Is it the sea, Jamie?" she asks around the tightening of her voice as the tip of the tweezers keeps digging around. Okay, maybe less finesse now. _Jesus_.

"Nah, mate. Guess again," he giggles then, fishing the little chip of metal out and adding it to the accumulation, and that's how she knows.

Glancing over her shoulder at him, she asks with amusement, "Is it _shrapnel_ , mate?"

His smile is delighted and more than a little crazed, wild around the edges. She's always liked his smile. "You got it. You got it. Roadie, Jack got it!"

"I heard," comes a low rumble from the pilot's seat, followed by the huff of a respirator.

"I spy with my little eye..." Jack starts, then stops when her comm starts to ring, looking down at it and then back to Jamie. "I should take this, mate? You mind if we pause a second?"

"Nope. Nope-nope-nope," comes his response, and she can feel him start to root around for another bit of glass. It's not pleasant. She prefers it to an oncoming infection, though. She's pretty sure that Roadie is going to charge her for this and call it urgent medical attention. 

The sun is starting to dip a little lower now, and soon, not soon enough, they'll be landing in the Outback. 

Then home.

She answers the comm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On Tumblr as JunkerJackrabbit.  
> Updating the notes with the music I used for each chapter, since that's where I'm stealing the chapter titles anyways.  
> Today was - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmJrASu6UQM


	21. this is the story of a dead man, who is running out of time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ** Talon fam  
> ** The family that slays together  
> ** Eating chips in the car  
> ** Tried Moira's POV, will be uncommon but felt necessary for Talon shenanigans

It's late in Oasis, but her house has been full for the last two days and they have all been busy in their own respects. Another difficult day in the war of attrition as _someone_ attempts to erode her life's work, her position on the Inner Council, and, ironically, her relationship with a mouthy little Junker, all in the same fell swoop. It has been strange having company these last few days, but say what you will about Talon and the occasional unpleasantries that accompany it, their core group has always been loyal. It means something to her. Not that she would ever admit it in so many words.

Akande had tended to dinner for them all. Lean fish. Roasted vegetables. Some sort of insipid green beverage that she had traded out for a glass of whiskey. Olivia had cajoled and wheedled behind her fork the entire time, complaining about the lack of condiments, seasoning, and spices, until Gabriel had taken it upon himself to go to the corner store. That's where they are now, sifting through a wild assortment of what she would quantify as _junk_ in search of an ever-increasing list of items the hacker wants. 

She suspects Gabriel asked her to come with him because he thought it would do her good to be out of the house for a bit. He isn't wrong, strictly speaking. It is a welcome break from observing the many cameras and communications being fielded about the ongoing investigation, but it is still gnawing at her even here. Twice now, Olivia has killed a live feed purposefully and claimed it to be a technical issue.

It is all the more likely, she contemplates, that Olivia and Akande are currently up to something, or at the very least, trying to obscure the truth. Both of which she feels she would have vastly more patience for if it were under different circumstances. They all have their secrets, after all.

In a black hoodie pulled up over his features to mask some of their deep, ashen-brown colour, Gabriel exhales in a raspy sound as he reviews the back of a bag of pretzels and then puts it back on the shelf. She is certain that to the majority of other shoppers, they appear quite incongruous, he in his hoodie and dark jeans, she in a teal button-down and white trousers, having intended to head into the office before Akande had insisted that she remain. 

Her patience is drawn immeasurably thin well before she pushes a pile of sweets, snacks, and carbonated beverages over the counter at a teenager who looks as if he wishes he was dead rather than standing behind a register. She can empathize in some regards. But soon their trove of junk food is secreted away into cloth bags and carried back to her town car. She considers it possible, looking at him in the dim light, that Gabriel also wanted an excuse to drive her car.

"Pass me the chips?" he asks after a time, his raspy voice resonating as they slip beneath the streetlights. She does, anticipating that somehow Olivia will not only know, but be cross that Moira will not allow _her_ to eat in her car. She mentally prepares the answer that Gabriel has never once spilled sixty-four ounces of pop inside of it before, nor has she found gum underneath the visor after he's driven it, unlike some.

He opens a can of cola with one hand on the steering wheel, taking a long drink from it before he admits, blunt as ever, "She made it out alright. They're trying to figure out whether or not to tell you how close it was."

That makes her eyes snap directly to him.

"Don't look at me like that. We worry about you, too, sometimes," he asserts raspily, the low gleam of his eyes visible in the light. "The Council also wanted your house tossed looking for her, and the boss didn't want you there for that."

"Keep your eyes on the road while you are driving my car," is all she manages to say, the words clipped and precise as she mulls over the information. "Am I supposed to feign surprise when they confess to their deceit later?"

"Maybe for Liv's sake?" he answers, crunching on crisps and not making a comment when she takes one as well, though the corner of his lips quirks up. "She's worried about your ass."

It tastes of salt and oil, little else. After she's chewed it, swallowed, she more states than asks, "How close was it, Gabriel?"

"She's fine," Gabriel confides, turning the car down a side-street to complete a second circuit of the block. _They're still at her house,_ she realizes. "But from what I heard, they broke Council mandate as soon as Akande was gone. Roughed her up a bit. Couple broken fingers. Sounds like she collapsed part of the building on her way out, then burned it down."

"I have seen far worse than a _few broken digits_ ," she all but bites out now, feeling her already tenuous control of this entire situation slip further. Then, with a subtle incredulity, "She burned the building down?"

"Yeah, and who had to stop you from vidcalling Morrison after he crashed her apartment?" he asks, a knowing look leveled at her. "You're soft on her." His dimly lit eyes narrow faintly, "Now you don't look at _me_ like that. It's not a bad thing, doc, but it'd make it harder for anyone to stay objective about this shit and you've got enough on your plate."

She doesn't dignify it with a response. It _is_ lucky that she has Gabriel. He is far more patient and in line with her idiosyncrasies than most, even if he is hell-bent at the moment on making this a lighter situation than it is. She wants to end his life the least right now, of the lot of them. That should account for something.

"You know, Jesse called me after all that went down," he's talking to fill the silence now as they loop around the block. "He had some money wagered with Lena on something. Guess your Junker bit the fuck out of Angela." Now he's trying to cheer her up, "I was going to get you a vidcapture to put on your desk, but he wouldn't pony up."

"Your puns have not improved over time, Gabriel," Moira answers. She wishes she had something to wipe her fingers on. They are oily from the crisps.

They both start suddenly at the sound of, " _Me extrañaste_?" from the backseat.  
** Miss me?

Flickers of violet light are dying down around the hacker, a cheeky smile on her features as she leans forward between the seats to steal the open bag of crisp and settle comfortably in the back of the car.

"Olivia," her voice is mirthless, holds a note of warning for the sudden jolt of adrenaline. She isn't in the mood. 

"Did you put your fucking translocator in the back of the car?" Gabriel asks, his eyes dimly luminescent in the dim light, well after he has adjusted the course on the car to avoid hitting a nearby lamp-post.

"You were taking _forever_ , Gabe," Olivia complains around a mouthful of chips, which she's certain are starting to litter the back of her car. "And then I listened in through your comm a little, and lo and behold...spilling my secrets and eating my chips. For shame, Muerte. My ears were _burning_."

The hacker reaches up between them again to take a cola from Gabriel. Moira uncaps a bottle of water, and prays for patience as he circles the block a second time. If Olivia spills pop in her car again, she's going to dissect her.

A chime on the comm cuts their conversation short.

The hacker's hands are already pulling up a host of holoscreens in the back of the car, shifting through them and the subsequent information feed into her neural implants at breakneck speed before confirming, "You tell her everything?"

"The bullet points," Gabriel answers in a hollow rasp, taking another sip of his cola. 

Olivia rolls her eyes, then waves to Moira, beckoning her back, "Hop in the back with me, bruja. I'll give you the _real_ rundown since _Gabriel_ likes to gossip." She flicks a look at the comm, adding, "Pull over, they are still at the house. Akande says it'll be at least twenty."

_Witch_. Olivia is fucking precocious sometimes. Nonetheless, once Gabriel has parked down a side-street, they all pile into the back of her car and she adjusts the window tint manually to prevent unwanted eyes on the screens. Olivia is in the middle, looking as pleased as a housecat nestled between them. There are crumbs on the floor of her car. _Patience._

"So around ten o'clock this morning, there was a localized blast near the bunkrooms on the eastern end of the facility. Another four minutes later, which collapsed a structural support," those violet eyes dart over the screens as Olivia draws up the specifics, processes the information for her faster than any of the others could. "We're talking multiple electrical fires. At least three dead and counting. Also she stole Korpal's bike. The younger one."

_This morning_. She could kill every last one of them. That includes Gabriel now.

A soft scoff escapes her of its own volition, mismatched eyes shifting up toward softly violet ones that hold...something she cannot quite put her finger on at the moment. " _I_ wanted to tell you, but...that's a lie. I didn't want to tell you. I wanted to get you drunk until it all this was over so you would _relax_ , bruja."

"Show me," is all Moira says, and a muscle draws wire-tight in the sharp line of her jaw. "No need to mess about."

Olivia helps her put it together. Every step from their departure to the explosion that rocketed through the warehouse. There's a touch to her arm, cooler than someone's fingers should be, and when her eyes flick sidelong she sees the lit cigarette extended. Gabriel, she realizes. Bless that man. She takes it from him and draws in a deep lungful of smoke, and taking the hint when Olivia hacks her car to crack the window, exhaling smoke there. 

When Olivia modifies the camera feed to retrieve the filtered footage, Moira sits still as a stone and watches as an omnic breaks the Junker's fingers at the table. One at a time, with a dull, sickening snap that echoes through the transport. She watches with a clinical precision, every place a blow lands, calculates the damages like they are a debt that will belong to someone else very soon. They will. Soon.

Her cigarette should taste like mint, menthol. It tastes like ashes and iron. She tries not to think about why that may be.

There are a few lines of calls from an unlisted number. She pays little enough attention to that, more to the vid of the explosion that rocketed through the bunkrooms in a hail of fire and metal. The shadow of faded bruises she can see on coppery features, painting them like watercolour, sickly in some places with yellow and green some places, a deeper purple where blood has pooled in the socket of one dark eye, just above the cheekbone. 

"Jesus," is all Gabriel says while they watch Jacqueline crack the chassis on a dying omnic, sever the cables that hold the power unit in place and crack out the _heart_. The slow exhalation, the faint tremor in the Junker's shoulders at it, these do not go unnoticed to her. 

It's curious what she has learned this week. For instance, she was well aware that Jacqueline was building ordinance in the bathroom of her makeshift cell, but even Moira herself is not certain she would have noticed the acquiring of all the pieces had it not been for Olivia's constant monitoring of the cameras. The little bit of wire slipped into a pocket. The chip of metal. The slow filing down of a support on the bed on the concrete floor to make the knife that Jacqueline is using to cut the power unit out of a still-living omnic.

Sometimes, it easy to forget, with her mouth on coppery skin, tasting salt and sometimes lipstick. With the soft quality of the other's voice in the early evening, the easy laughter between them. The night-dark eyes that warm the colour of chocolate when they catch the light, like coffee when they don't. With the way there's always a little pull to the curve of the other's lip, at the corner of its apex where the scar traces up to only just touch the skin, right before they meet hers - every time. Sometimes, it is easy to forget that Jacqueline has been a Junker all this time. What that entails.

She knows that this ends well, but it is still unpleasant to watch the dart of that slim frame through halls and byways, the sheltering of it behind a door when the guards run by in the smoke. The powering of a wall panel with the omnic's power unit, so that a keycard can be used, and the diving to the ground seconds before the power clicks back on and all of the video goes dark. 

"Where is she now?" it sounds more commanding than she means it, scarlet and blue eyes sweeping over the screens.

"Uno momento," Olivia retorts, calibrating a few items on the screens before reporting, "Over the Indian Ocean."

There's the squinting of violet eyes as the shorter woman tilts her head, bemused at something transmitting through her neural implants, presumably, "Based on the audio on the interior? She's playing 'I Spy' with...someone named Jamie."

A long pause before the hacker remarks with incredulity, "It's the ocean. Almost every time."

Olivia's chin is on her shoulder now, and she hasn't removed it yet. The hacker peers at one of the screens as she points, "Activate that. It looks like she called Rialto and left you a message."

Against her better judgment, Moira activates the message.

The recording starts, "Hey babe."

A familiar voice, a bit hoarse from smoke. Moira pretends that her features don't soften slightly, pretends further that she doesn't see Olivia's little grin at that, or how the hacker mouths _Babe_ to Gabriel before fanning herself with one hand. 

"Shit went a little sideways. I'm sure you'll hear about that soon. What I've done. What I'm about to do." 

Her eyes narrow slightly in thought. _Where are you going with this? You know I am not in Rialto._

"I don't really know what to say. I've got a signal jammer on the comm, so they shouldn't be able to find it even if they're looking. Maybe. This might go real bad in about thirty seconds or so. It's kind of stupid what you think of when it's all down to the wire."

She doesn't like the sound of that voice.

"Look, I... _shit_ ," the call cuts out for a moment, cussing heard in the background. Then, "I'm still on the line, burned my fingers."

She doesn't like the sound of _that cough_ either.

"Le Fanu. Carmilla. You will think me cruel, very selfish. Pull it up. Try not to hate me too much when you read it. Looks like I caught feelings. I gotta go, babe."

"Do not," there's a direct manner about her when Olivia starts to pull up the information, presumably for her. Presumably to be helpful. It's all a little too late for that, though, and she scans the lines on the screen with a muscle drawing taut in her cheek.

_You will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish; the more ardent the more selfish. How jealous I am you cannot know. You must come to me, loving me, to death; or else hate me and still come to me, and hating me through death and after._

Moira feels the tension that enters her countenance, then in her chest like an old friend, not knowing what to do with what's attempting to permeate through. The muscle is atrophied. She does not appreciate the way it feels when it starts to work again.

"Turn it off," is all she says then, clearing her throat softly and sinking back in her seat to pretend that Gabriel isn't looking at her the way he is. Like he wants to say something. 

Olivia complies, though soon touches her arm, shaking it as she alerts, "Hey. Hey. We have a call coming in on her line. Live." The screens shift of a sudden, almost sickening in the way they contort and then snap to what the hacker wants, and then Olivia grins like a _Cheshire cat_. "I have a feed on it. It's Bartholeme."

"Pull it up," Gabriel requests in a raspy voice.

Taking another pull from her cigarette, she passes it back to him. He accepts it, dimly red eyes set on another comm screen soon after as he accesses a few files and starts to consider something. She can read him like a book, even from here. He's planning something already. She's not surprised. She had confided some of her reservations with him, after all. They have spoken about Bartholeme more than once before.

"Miss Vargas," it's tinny, the timbre of it shivering like a violin string in the close quarters. "What, exactly, have you done in Oasis, I wonder?"

Of course it would be him. She had not thought him so bold as to play his hand this way. But, then again. He must know by now that he isn't winning his little war of attrition. Now he's scrambling to reset the board in any way that he can. 

"Is that a rhetorical question?" of course there's a shift in that Australian accent, because Jacqueline is Jacqueline. It sounds incredulous, a roughness to its edges that muddies the subtleties of its rise and fall. She could almost chuckle at it, were it not for the gravity of the situation. Almost.

"It is not. I merely wonder if you have considered all the implications of what you have done," the omnic responds. "Perhaps this conversation would be easier if we met face to face. All of our cards on the table for the other to see."

"I'm not stupid." Anger touches the edges of Jack's voice now, a tension she knows will build in slender shoulders to draw the tattoo of the Hydra constellation taut across the back of one.

"Perhaps you would rather play a game, Miss Vargas?" his voice is too smooth now, mocking even. The comms were wiped clean. That leaves limited options. "An answer for an answer, isn't that how this is supposed to work? Or is that specific to Minister O'Deorain?"

"He has access to information he should not," Moira observes evenly, not letting her voice betray what she feels at that. "Another sweep on my house and the lab will be required."

The click of a tongue to the roof of a mouth sounds, Jack responding with surprising vitriol, "Yeah? _Fuck you._ How's that for an answer?"

Gabriel snorts softly with amusement.

"How quaint," comes the thrum of Bartholeme's voicebox by way of response. "You do realize that if you elect to return of your own volition, I could guarantee your safety until we come to a mutually beneficial arrangement. If you do not - well. You catch my drift, do you not?"

"And who, exactly, are you?"

"Ah, I forget we are not on a first name basis. You may call me Bartholeme. Pleased to make your acquaintance," there's a cutting note to his voice now. "I believe you are well-acquainted with my associate Maixent. Max."

"Oh, Max," Jack retorts, and there's a shift hard on the offensive, an Australian accent thickening. "Yeah, we got friendly, mate. Gave him a right Junker handshake earlier. That's when you _put your hand in an omnic's chest_ and fuck around till it stops moving. You want me to mail you back his power unit? Might make a nice paperweight."

Jack wants to fight. It's good. It may make him lose perspective enough to slip more than he has. 

"You _what_?" Bartholeme snaps out on the other end, a tremor to his timbre before it's back to smooth. It's a little more personal now. Good. "Junkers. You are all the same, aren't you? You never know when to lay down and _die_."

"Hey, your boys were the ones who decided they wanted to fuck around. So that's what we're doing now. _Fucking around_ ," Jacqueline's voice is smoother now, smoke over fire, and she can hear the embers beneath it. "No rules. No mercy. Only the strong survive."

There's a dark, smooth note that permeates the Junker's voice now, drawls out softly as if in challenge, "Welcome to the Scrapyard, motherfucker."

Near her side, Moira hears Olivia whisper, "I love her. If you break up with her, I'm hacking her number out of your phone, _bruja_."

"Hush," Moira retorts simply, though accepts the cigarette Gabe passes back to her without protest. The last drag taken, she flicks it into an ashtray. 

" _What's done is done_." It's not. They can all hear it in his voice now. "Let's keep this more civil. I don't think you fully appreciate how beneficial a partnership with me could be worth. Here's a taste. Why don't you check your accounts."

Another flick of a screen and they're looking at figures. An amount of credits transferred directly into Jacqueline's account, more than Oasis pays the mechanic in a year.

Her eyes drift over the screen - the deductions, even before this most recent to Mako Rutledge - are astronomical. You would _have to_ share a flat with four people to afford living on what Jacqueline does, even on an Oasis salary. _How much are you sending out to Australia?_ She makes a mental note to review it later.

"I trust that I have your attention. Now. I can guarantee that amount deposited, monthly, if you confess to involvement with Overwatch and implicate Minister O'Deorain in the meantime," Bartholeme sounds sure of himself now. The trap has been baited. There is a part of her, even after all of this, that wonders what will happen now. "The groundwork has already been set, and I do not care whether or not the association is valid or a fallacy. It will be made to look the former."

There's a long pause, and then a concession from Jacqueline, "Alright."

It's not what she expected, and there's a part of her that goes cold at that. She can see the sudden flinch on Olivia's countenance in the periphery. The concern on Gabriel's. Their pity is unnecessary. The muscle is atrophied for a reason. 

"Alright. So about Overwatch," Jacqueline starts, and she feels an uneasiness settle into her for a moment. "I usually let my co-workers punch me in the mouth for no goddamn reason."

Thank God. Jacqueline is _toying_ around with them. "It's sort of like a team-building exercise we do in Junkertown. Local flavor, you know? Love that one guy, by the way. What's his name? Jack? My work twin. Got a postcard from him last week from Bermuda. Nice shorts. Great sense of humor."

Gabriel isn't looking at the screen, but she can hear a raspy sound of amusement. 

"Miss Vargas..." Bartholeme starts.

"Oh, right. Right, mate. I forgot you were looking for a way to _get rid of O'Deorain_. Right then," Jack clears her throat and confides with scathing sarcasm, voice cracking softly from what she presumes is smoke inhalation. "I take on special cases for Overwatch. Coercion to defect. Who knows, honestly, what I could have gotten done in another week."

_What?_

"We've been testing this new method of hypnosis. It's real specific. You have to breathe the command words real soft against someone's inner thigh for it to work. It was showing some _great_ potential. Rave reviews."

_God damn it, Jacqueline_. Gabriel is definitely laughing now, the sound raspy as he looks over at her.

"You may not have heard about it over in _Talon_ , but you have to be specially trained. Now there's a whole lot of Overwatch revenue lost. The _Grand High Council_ is going to be so disappointed when I turn in my status report and tell them the mission failed. It's sad, really. God, _I put in a lot of hours_."

" _Miss Vargas_."

Her fingertips come to pinch the bridge of her nose, but a chuckle sounds from her nonetheless. _Incorrigible_. She can feel Olivia's shoulders shaking with laughter where one rests against hers. 

The click of a tongue to the roof of a mouth again, which she recognizes means that the Junker plans to be particularly impudent, "I can hold my breath for five minutes now. Guess I could take up snorkeling in the new life I'm going to buy with your money. Wonder if the Great Barrier Reef is still _irradiated as fuck_."

"Madre de Dios," Olivia whispers around the edges of laughter, cheek resting on Moira's shoulder now as she asks breathlessly, "I love her. _Where did you find her?_ "

"In the basement machine shop of the Mechanics building," Moira answers drily, caught somewhere between a vague irritation and true amusement like an insect in a web. "Where I evidently should have left her."

"Not if she can hold her breath for five minutes," Gabriel rasps, his voice hollow around the edges, but undoubtedly amused.

" _Gabriel_ ," she warns lowly, though the hum of a chuckle chases after it.

He's grinning.

"If that is the way you intend to play this, Miss Vargas, our options moving forward are rather limited," Bartholeme is talking once more. "We have all transport locations out of Oasis under watch, as well as your apartment, place of employent, and Minister O'Deorain's. There's nowhere for you to go."

"Yeah? You check under the bed yet?" Jack answers, sounding amused, just before the line goes dead from her end.

There's a long stretch of silence after that, scarlet and blue eyes fixated on the holoscreen with a subtle incredulity and vague satisfaction at having caught Bartholeme in his own game. 

"So this hypnosis thing?" Olivia starts in with a wicked amusement, violet eyes flashing in the dim light.

"Liv," Gabriel steps in then, his raspy voice yet sounding amused.

The hacker sinks a little lower in her seat, apparently mollified for the moment, though a decided mirth still glints in her eyes.

"You know," Gabriel's shoulders roll slightly, wisps of energy wicking from him as he observes as if it were nothing, "We could just kill him."

He has a point.


	22. time ain't the healer that my heart demands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ** Junkertown shenanigans  
> ** Cheeky doggos  
> ** Fight club  
> ** Old relationship reunion tour

There's something about Junkertown. Nowhere else is home in the way that it is. She feels it in her bones as soon as her boots hit the dry, red earth. _Home_. Roadie and Jamie let her stay in their shed long enough to sleep. It smells like machine oil and metal, red earth, explosives. Jamie's bed smells faintly of blackpowder when she drops into it, still in smoke-scented, blood-flecked clothes and sand-caked boots. She's asleep before you can say _This bomb's for you_. 

She sleeps for twenty hours and wakes up to a gallon of water, two rad pills, and a shot of moonshine on the stand next to her. Junkertown hospitality at it's finest. Tipping back the last two at the same time, she feels the sharp burn of acrid alcohol and the tinny, almost metallic taste of the pills simultaneously, pulling a face before she cracks open the water.

Jack doesn't think that she's ever been so thirsty in her life. Guess that's what happens when you take a wander out into the Arabian desert to avoid a terrorist cell. It sounds ridiculous when she thinks about it. But she hasn't been awake for all that long when Jamie flops down beside her, shoring up the pillows to turn one side of the bed into a makeshift couch, and they nestle in together to watch a cricket game on her vidscreen at his request. When cricket transitions into cartoons well into the afternoon, Roadie comes back with lunch.

It's packets of uncooked ramen noodles. It tastes sort of like popcorn. After almost forty-eight hours without a meal, it's fucking delicious. She doesn't even protest when Jamie starts wheedling for her flavor packet, though does watch with a mild fascination when he smashes the ramen up in the bag, then tips it back, pouring a little dried noodle into his mouth and then a little dried powder, crunching them up together.

Jamison Fawkes is her favorite weird little man.

Jack dozes off again in the afternoon, her cheek nestled to his shoulders, and she stirs occasionally when he twitches and jerks in his sleep, listening to his murmuring until she drifts off again. At least until Roadie grasps her boot to shake her awake, and she shoots straight up to a rumbling, "It's time to go."

So it is, if they want to reach the old signal post by the appointed time. It only takes her a minute to catch up her bag, comb through her hair to tie it back - no time to brush it. She's not sure if Jamie even owns a brush anyways. 

Then they head out into the red-orange sun, and she could almost laugh at how beautiful it is. Blue sky as far as she can see. Red rock and earth underfoot. 

_God fuck, I missed this._

Onto the back of Roadie's hoverbike, holding onto the backbar as he whips them out onto the long dirt road toward Junkertown in the distance. It's hot and it's dry and it's dusty, but she can see all the things that she loves in the distance. All of them but one. It screams of home, down to the glint of the massive sheet-metal fortifications far on the cliffs in the distance, kissed in rust where the paint has faded away in places.

Jamie's the one who spots it first, when the reach the signal post, a sorry streak of yellow fur streaked in red on the side of the road. Dead dingo. Not the most uncommon sight out here, not when someone's been through in a hurry and gotten careless about the local wildlife. Unfortunate, or they were just being a right dick. Probably not a Junker. She'd seen some of the scrappers come to blows over the wild dogs before when someone wasn't careful, more than one dingo perched on the back of a humvee or hoverbike car with a bandana or cheeky doggles. 

When he scrambles down out of the side-car and into the scrub to scoop up, one, then two little balls of fluff and giggles like a madman, she can't help but shake her head and laugh. They make a game of it as they wait for Tas and Maggie to meet them, Roadie on watch, Jack and Jamie down in the scrub looking for the rest of the pups. Only three that they can find, two of which Jamie hops up out of the ditch with to show Roadie.

"Lookit the little blokes, mate!" Jamie all but cackles with an armful of squirming fluff. "I'm gonna call 'em Lock, Stock, n' Barrel."

There's a rumbling grunt of disapproval from Roadie as he huffs a breath from his respirator, but when Jamie immediately makes his very own puppy dog eyes, she knows that fight's already over, "Roadie, please? Pleeeeease?" 

When he lifts up one of the pups to hand it to the larger man, cheekily confiding, "Yours is Stock, cause you're stocky, right? I'll keep Lock here. Hi, Lock. Hi." Another giggle as he tucks the pup into his arms and it gnaws on his metal fingers, "And Jack-Out-Of-The-Box, she gets _Barrel_ cause we just sprang her out of the joint. I'll take such good care of Lock, mate. We're gonna be best friends. Aren't we?"

"Barrel," Jack muses with thought, holding up a squirming ball of flea-infested fur by the scruff of the neck, trying not to let it nip her. She did, after all, just escape a terrorist jail and is not in a hurry to die of animal-born disease in the Outback. Part of her wonders if Cato still has a vet kit, or will get a fresh batch in soon. Might be worth it. Little bugger is cute. And already mouthing at her hand now that she's let down her guard. 

Still covered in richly brown puppy fluff that hasn't quite turned tan-red, the little whelp has a nick in his ear, a stripe of white on his nose, and white paws that he hasn't quite grown into. And she knows from the look on Jamie's face, they sure as shit aren't leaving them out in the scrub when they go. Hopefully "Lock" doesn't have a little puppy peg-leg after a week with Jamie.

Kicking back on the carcass of an old car, she busies herself with picking bugs off of _Barrel_ , scratching between his ears occasionally while she waits for the plume of red dust in the distance to draw nearer. Except it's not fucking _just_ Tas and Maggie that she sees coming up the road. No. _Of course you wouldn't make it that simple_.

Jaeden is with them. She can see a crest of blue hair in the distance.

"Roadie," Jack intones warningly, a sidelong glance made toward him. "Do not."

His hand is already on his scrapgun. Strike while the anvil's hot, I guess. She jumps up off the car and makes her way over toward to Jamie to wrap him in a quick, one-armed hug, promising, "I'll post you some snacks, Jamie. Keep a good eye on Lock, yeah?" 

A quick peck to his cheek, a resultant giggle, and she starts heading up the road. Getting Jamie, Roadie, and Jaeden within twenty feet of each other sounds like a _fucking terrible_ idea after the incident with the summer shack and resultant attempt to drive a cart full of ordinance into the Scrapyard to blow up it and Jaeden. Pack over her shoulder, pup in the crook of her arm, Jack makes her way up the road at perhaps a brisker pace than necessary.

She's not really keen to see how far Roadie can actually throw that rattling hook and she doesn't want to be stuck between him and Jaeden's glaive if he decides to try for it.

That walk seems like it will last forever, before the hoverbike pulls over and the humvee follows after it. She can see Tas driving, Maggie perched in the back of it in the gunner seat. Jaeden dismounts in a smooth movement, a decided swagger to her step as she makes her way over to the humvee and leans a hip on it, waits for Jack to come to her. Because of course she does. What's the point if it's not a total fucking power move, right?

She's becoming swiftly convinced that this is about to be the longest week of her life. When she makes her way over, there's the return of that flashfire smile, the one that's white as wolfish, hazel eyes bright above it.

"Jackrabbit," the Junker Queen's rough-edged voice is familiar, speaks to her bones. Speaks of home. She watches those hazel eyes flick toward Roadie and Jamie down the road, not fixed on her even though the words are. "Kneel."

A show of loyalty. This is where we are right now. Her dark eyes meet hazel and see the resolve there, and while her pride balks at it, she recognizes that she is not Jaeden's anything anymore, and that the other has things to prove - perhaps to Roadie and Jamie, perhaps to Tas and Maggie. Namely that Jack is not a soft spot for her anymore. Not a weakness. We're back to this.

The roles we play.

Jack swallows her pride, kneels down on the gritty red earth, dark eyes yet fixed to hazel for a long moment until they settle on dusty boots. 

"Good." There's the touch of calloused fingertips to her hair, an indication that the other is ready for her to rise. "Get up. You're riding with me."

When she levers back up to her feet, Tas winks at her, cheeky as ever. Of course he is. She winks back, sees him chuckle in the driver's seat. Dark-skinned, he has a point of white above either eye in some sort of paint, another broad stripe horizontal across his chest beneath an open leather vest. Just like the devils he took his name from. They really do all have animal names, she muses, except Jae, really. 

Maggie is limned in red dust from the drive out, and it clings in the weathered lines of her face, in the curls of her wiry grey hair. One of the older Junkers and former ALF, Maggie is arguably the best gunner that they have in 'town. Tough as nails. A good pick if Jae expected trouble following after her - or at least more trouble than Jamie and Roadie already provide. 

Jaeden swings back onto the bike with the creak of metal and leather, her usual cape foregone for obvious reasons. Slipping the pup into her pack for the time being, Jack climbs up to settle behind her, smelling dust and smoke, machine oil and paint, the faintest hint of desert sage. 

"How many strays am I taking into town?" comes a more private, and subtly more amused query from Jaeden, though the smile over that spiked shoulder is no less wolfish for it. 

"Just two," Jack answers, her arms coming around the other as the bike roars back, rumbles down the red dirt road. "You want him to kneel too, or we good?"

That earns her a look that is all too brash for her to deal with right now, and then they're off. On to Junkertown in the distance. 

\---- 

_One month later._

"C'mon, Barrel," Jack intones as she hops down off a support beam, landing lightly on her feet as she finishes her work on the fog harvest screen for the day, her boots immediately pounced and gnawed upon by the dingo pup that had been waiting in the shade. It's been a little over a month now , and he's filled out nicely, almost impossibly doubled in size. It cost her an arm and a leg to get him vaccinated and treated for pests, but she had ponied up to send the same kit out to Jamie in the scrub, with hazard pay considering the mines littered around the shack he shares with Roadie.

Communications outside of Junkertown have been minimal. She received one message from Akande to tell her to lay low. She received another from Moira the same day, informing her that it was best they cut communication until the matter has been settled, for her own safety. She had bristled about that a bit, but it was more than she got the last time shit went south, and the geneticist had been sincere enough in her promise to find her when it was over, regardless of the time frame. Her stipend is still being paid in the meantime, which sure as shit doesn't hurt.

She's been keeping busy in the meantime. As busy as humanly possible in order to pass the time. Her family has also been up to 'town proper for the last few days, which has been nice. Not that it's all that far, per say, but unless the lift is running, the trip up from the solar farms at the base of the cliffs is a fucking bitch. Last time it broke, Hammond had to lower her brothers back down using his cable.

It happens that she checks the comm anyways, like a bad habit she can't kick. Every day like clockwork, wondering if there will be a message or something to let her know that this is almost at its conclusion. That maybe shit can go back to how it was. She loves Junkertown, but god if she wasn't starting to love Oasis a little bit too. And it was easier to ignore old wounds with the distance. Here, Jaeden is constantly picking at them, a jab here, a quip there that makes ire prickle under skin all over again.

Speak of the devil.

"Oi, cousin," Tas saunters out from the impound yard, a cigarette between his fingertips and what she'd only describe as a maul over one shoulder. It has kick-jets on the side to slam into shit harder. Junker ingenuity at its finest. Actually, that was probably the fog harvester and not a seismic maul. "Queenie needs you in the 'yard."

Of course she does. The retrofits on Sovereign have been going well, and when she isn't helping Cato in the clinic or Vance down in hydroponics, Jae finds ways to put them in close proximity, then scrubs at her nerves like sandpaper until they're almost at each other's throats again. It had come close a few times already. She's overheard Tas and a few of the other Queensguard making bets on whether it'll come to fighting or fucking first. It's damn sure not going to be the second one.

Still, it doesn't take her all that long to make her way down to the Scrapyard to where the other works on Sovereign. Sans armor and warpaint, Jaeden is tall, with a firm musculature that shifts effortlessly beneath a machine oil-stained t-shirt and military fatigue trousers in the old ALF red drab pattern. She tries not to notice how the back of the shirt clings to the other's shoulders, averts her gaze toward Sovereign instead.

"Got your _summons_ ," Jack confirms as she comes up beside the mecha, looking at the smooth, red surface of it - nicked and scraped as it is to reveal the brighter metal underneath. The furrows in the surface when bullets ricocheted off. The fresh panel on a shoulder that had taken them several hours to patch. "What did you need today, your Majesty?"

"Danny cut out on Sunday's match in the 'yard," that rough-edged voice responds, Jaeden levering up on one of the rungs in the back of the mecha to tighten a bolt, then tossing a wrench down into the open toolbox below. When the Queen lifts the front of her shirt and uses it to wipe sweat from her face, she gets a front row view of the other's abs, focuses on the mecha once more instead. 

"I need you to tap in. Kama's going to bring your mecha up in the lift for you. That gives us.." Jaeden sucks on her teeth for a moment, then lifts her chin toward Jack, "Four days to bring it up to scrap before the match."

"Jackrabbit isn't your mecha, Jaeden," Jack answers blithely, dark eyes touched with offense as she watches Jae jump down, bend to scratch Barrel between the ears. "Who is the match against?"

She suspects she knows, and isn't going to like it.

It's confirmed when hazel eyes snap up to her with the answer and more than a little challenge, "Dingo, and it's not optional. We'll be in the middle of repairs on a third of the 'guard. I need your mecha in if we're having a match."

"I'll consider it if you swap me out for someone else, I know Tas has a match with Vance later in the day," Jack counters, not budging on it and feeling herself go on the defensive. Her arms cross her chest as she leans a shoulder to the nearby wall, chin lifting back toward Jaeden as she confirms in no uncertain terms, "I'm not doing a match with Dingo again."

"Did I fucking _ask_ you to?" Jaeden's eyes snap back to her, and she's familiar with the look in them. Frustration. There's a note of authority in that voice now, hazel eyes never leaving hers as the other asks, "Or did I fucking tell you to?"

She straightens when that tall frame draws nearer, all but backing her up, shoulders against the sheet metal. Jaeden towers over her, smeared in machine oil and rust, smelling faintly of desert sage, but ducks down nearer to state, "Because I'm pretty fucking sure it was the second one."

That white t-shirt is rolled up at the sleeves, clinging to the toned frame underneath, one that she was familiar with once, knew like the back of her own hand. Jae didn't become Queen by _not_ being tough as nails, and a few years of distance hasn't changed that. But she didn't let Jae push her around then, and she's not going to be cowed by her now.

So instead, incredulity bleeding into her coppery features as she looks up, Jack locks dark eyes to the other's boldly, asserting in a smooth cadence, "You don't own me, Cooper. Don't act like you fucking do."

When Jack moves as if to skirt around her, an arm comes between her and the Scrapyard, another to the other side of her to cage her in, and suddenly it's not the Queen talking. No. It's the girl she knew when she was younger, the one that would sometimes pick a fight with her just to see what she'd do. It didn't used to bother her this much. Now it just pisses her right the fuck off. 

"You're a Junker, aren't you?" Jaeden holds her gaze even still, is about to be successful in getting at least the fight part, if she keeps it up. "You forget what that means?" There's a low sound before the other observes, and she can feel them headed down a treacherous slope already, years of bitterness between them swiftly coming to a head, "You know what I think?"

Those firm-boned features are nearer hers now, scarcely apart, and all she can see is Jaeden's eyes, hazel and antagonistic in the moment. The air feels like it's boiling between them already as the other bites out softly, "I think I liked you a lot better before you washed all the blood and sand off your knuckles and let Oasis _make you soft_. Your new girl like it, is that it? When you act soft for her?" Hazel eyes search hers before the other adds, "Because I've never seen you _run home scared_ over a busted lip or _roll over like a little bitch_ at the first sign of a scrap."

There's a long pause afterwards before a sharp edge touches that wolfish smile, Jaeden observing with half-lid eyes, pleased as a cat in the sunlight, "How are those clean hands treating you now?" 

When that voice sounds again, it's a goading whisper, "She call you back yet?"

Do not rise to the obvious bait. Do not rise to the obvious bait. 

She rises to the obvious bait.

And just like that, it all comes howling back.

"Fuck you, Alice," Jack bites out, her upper lip curling to reveal a slip of teeth as she tries not to notice the smirk crossing Jaeden's own at the reaction that she's getting. Dark eyes flicking down the taller woman dismissively, before meeting hazel ones once more, she doesn't give an inch of ground as she retorts, "What would you even know about it? You couldn't even _look at me_ after the omnium, and now you're throwing your weight around like a fucking bulldog because you don't want to fucking deal with me _now_."

She clicks her tongue off the roof of her mouth, lifting her chin toward the throne nearby, "Why don't you go hide behind that some more, Alice. Makes it all a lot easier, doesn't it?"

A hand wraps itself in her shirt at that, a decided tension in those toned shoulders, and she doesn't know if Jaeden is about to hit her or is flinching at her to get a reaction, but doesn't back down, dark eyes glittering like a cornered animal's as she snaps softly, "Get _the fuck_ out of my face."

"What the fuck are you going to do about i-" 

Jaeden cuts off abruptly when Jack shoves her back. There's a momentary stumble of surprise, the taller woman clearly not having expected it, but then Jae cracks her neck with excruciating slowness, then lifts her chin with a rough, "Right, then."

This time it's a fist headed at her. 

Maybe it's how fucking pissed she is at this point. Maybe it's the amount of times Akande has done the same thing to her, but the reaction has become like clockwork, ingrained deep in the muscle memory. Jack darts to the side and moves forward, hooking a hand around the front of the other's face, and then the other when she slips behind Jaeden, hooking a leg and using the momentum to whip Jaeden face-first into the floor with the pivot. 

It surprises them both, and it's Jaeden, so when she watches the other slowly push up on an elbow, incredulously wiping blood from her nose, her first thought isn't - fucking jump on her and finish it. No. It's to look toward the door to the rooms they've been staying in and start that way to get some ice. That's what gets the legs kicked out from under her. 

Jaeden is six feet and three inches of solid fucking muscle, and she's the Queen for a reason. If she wasn't livid before Jack threw her at the ground, she sure as fuck is now. A hand in Jack's hair for leverage, the taller woman slams knuckles into her ribs once, twice, driving the air out of her before grappling forward and trying for an outright pin.

Don't hit the ground. It's the first thing they both told her and it's for a reason. She can't out-strong-arm Jaeden, can't make herself as small as she'd like to, so she tries for an arm bar instead, grasps a wrist and an elbow as she twists a leg over the other's shoulder, not able to quite get enough leverage for it in the position she's in, but making it more difficult for Jaeden to hold her down, and at least the blows stop raining down. 

When she's thrown off, it's hard, and she skips like a stone to land flat on her back, propping up on her elbows just in time to see Jaeden look at her like a predator looks at something that it's _finished playing with_ and lunge forward. She has just enough time to catch a handful of red dust and fling it into Jaeden's face before that well-muscle frame collides with her again, hearing a low swear as she slammed back into the ground.

Neither of them notice the lean form in red drab camouflage that walks calmly across the Scrapyard a few minutes later, slinging a rifle across its back. No, they're embroiled in their current scrap, a mad tangle of knuckles, knees, elbows, and at one point when Jaeden tries to press an arm down on her face - teeth. They don't notice when it turns on the tap or walks slowly back toward them, footfalls all but silent on the dusty metal. 

At least not until ice-cold water is upended over both of them, soaking them to the bone and causing them to break apart like feral cats.

"Are we done, girls?" the stern voice of Waimarie Vargas all but rings through the arena, a rust-limned bucket in one hand and the burning end of a hand-rolled cigarette in the other. "Or do I need to fire a warning shot?"

Jaeden all but bounds up to her feet, towering over the slighter woman, her hazel eyes narrowing briefly on Jack before she simply wipes blood from her face with the back of one hand and states politely, "Major Vargas."

The unbloodied hand extends toward her, and Jack takes it, allows Jae to pull her up, gooseflesh broken out over seemingly the whole of her. She strips her shirt over her head after a few seconds, wringing the water out of it before pulling it back on, breathing, "H-h-howsit, M-mom?"

Her ribs are bruised already, that much was evident when she peeled off the shirt, before she put it back on. The shoulder is bruised, and there's a nice scrape on her cheekbone where Jaeden slammed her against the floor. But there's blood trickling from the other's nose, and those hazel eyes are red and watering from the dust, and that's not bad either.

Waimarie Vargas is only about five foot five, shorter even than Jack, but her presence is commanding in its own right. Ex-paramilitary. Ex-Liberation Front. Tough as fucking boot leather, her darkly bronze features weathered and lined from a life in the outback sun, flaxen hair mostly grey and white with hints of its former pale blonde. Clad in red drab that matches the cliffs near home, and with a rifle slung over her back, she puffs at her cigarette again before flicking it on the ground and grinding it out under a boot. 

"Now," Waimarie rounds on both of them, circling them slowly like she used to when they got caught doing something particularly stupid when they were younger. She looks at Jaeden as if the Queen were still the lanky teenager that used to sneak in their trailer at night, "Cut your shit, Cooper." 

Then, to Jack, with no more patience for her own daughter, if perhaps even less, "And you. You do that to someone, you don't _turn your back on them_ after. You hear me, Ngaire?" It gets her cuffed in the back of the head next, "You say something smart to her?"

"Yes, ma'am," it falls from her lips like an old habit.

"Who threw the first punch?" Waimarie looks between them with narrowed eyes.

"I did, ma'am," Jaeden replies then, voice still a little rough, though the glint of amusement in those eyes is starting to return.

Her mother makes an authoritative gesture with one hand, looking between the two of them once more before stating, "You're done."

"Yes, ma'am," comes from both of them in tandem, an old habit.

Neither of them says a word until she's done scolding them, and she wonders if they even breathe until Waimarie Vargas meanders back in the direction of the west watchpoint, likely to complete a mandated shift of scanning the Outback for hostiles.

She offers the olive branch first, this time, nodding up toward Jaeden to observe, "Let's get you some ice for that shit."

A grunt comes in response, though the other follows after her into the living quarters behind the throne, drops into a chair in the kitchen and simply watches while she finds not an ice pack, but a bottle of moonshine in the freezer and wraps it in a hand towel to press to Jae's presumably broken nose.

Touch lighter, she tips the other's head back and directs, "It'll stop bleeding faster."

There's a low sound of amusement, the Queen's voice rough as she observes, "How long's it been since we got _dressed down by your mom_?"

"Probably that shit with the bottle rockets near the still," Jack replies, tilting her head toward the other room as she asks, "You got any drops in there?"

Jaeden nods slightly by way of response, a hand raking through blue hair to comb some of the dust out of it. 

Hazel eyes open as Jack steps away, making her way back toward Jaeden's room, then the bathroom to find some and come back. Tipping the other's head back once more, she says, "Keep your head back."

The other thankfully complies.

Careful not to touch Jaeden's eye with the dropper, Jack applies two drops to each eye, then damps a cloth to carefully clear the dust and grit from around them. Remaining still until she's finished, Jae rubs at an eye with the heel of her hand when she sits all the way back up, and intones simply, "Thanks."

Then, removing the chilled bottle from pressed to the side of her face, the taller woman rolls her toned shoulders slightly to loosen them, and observes, "Maybe you're not as soft as I thought you were. Who taught you that? You sure as shit didn't scrap like that before."

Perching on the edge of the table, and taking the bottle from the other to hold it to her aching ribs, Jack answers, "New boss. I've been doing some freelance work." With a moment's thought, she confides, "He's a health nut. I take care of light tech work for a stipend, and then he pays to knock me around in a training ring twice a week."

"Mixed martial?" Jaeden asks then, firm-boned features intent as she attempts to tack down the specifics. 

"Yeah. Couple African styles - Dambe, Gidigbo - and then whatever he feels like that day," Jack answers back, touching the scrape to her cheek before admitting, "Mostly been drilling me in Krav and yelling at me to stay mobile. He's got about...shit. Almost two feet on me. Arm as big around as my waist."

"We should scrap again tomorrow," the Queen affirms at that, sinking back in her chair to look at Jack. "You're going to show me how you did that."

"And then what? You're going to take the rest of your piss poor mood out on me?" Jack retorts drily, head atilt as she meets the other's gaze. "Look, I owe you for putting me up. I know that. But it's not like I _haven't been_ putting in work, and I have no idea what you're trying to prove to me or to them."

There's a muscle drawing taut in the other's cheek at that, lending definition to the scar that touches the firm line of Jaeden's jaw. Hazel eyes meeting hers, the other intones in a rough-edged voice, "I need them to respect me, or to fear me. You, bunny, are a constant fucking reminder they might not have to either and could get away with it. You run your goddamn mouth, argue. You know what I'd do if one of them said half the shit to me that you don't think twice about?"

That fist would have flown a lot sooner. Or worse. She's not exactly wrong.

"You take some shit when someone is your girl, right?" Jaeden states with a low sound of displeasure, those hazel eyes settled on hers still. "And that's fine. But you aren't my girl right now. You're my Junker. And I need you to fall the fuck in line, or I'm going to start fucking putting you there."

"You disagree with me?" the Queen adds for good measure, a hint of actual anger present now as she nods toward the door. "You do it when we're alone. Not out the fuck in the Scrapyard for anyone who wanders through to see. If that wasn't your goddamn mom, I'd have some blood on my hands right now that wasn't fucking yours. Now. We good?"

Jack exhales slowly, dark eyes flicking over those firm-boned features before she nods. Her voice is smooth when she answers, "We're good." Silence for a moment, before she admits slowly, "I shouldn't have been such a shit about it. Old habits."

There's a soft snort from the other at that, Jaeden volunteering begrudgingly, "You and me both. I spend half the time wanting to box your stupid fucking ears in and the other half...well." There's a pointed look at that. "You ever think we could have made that shit work?"

That's a complicated question.

Her mind races for a second before she settles on an honest, "I did once. There was a long time, that's really all I wanted." Jack picks at a loose thread at the hem of her shirt, dark eyes flicking back up as she observes, "Wasn't in the cards."

There's an intensity to those hazel eyes that she doesn't like, Jaeden shifting slowly forward and then up to stand in front of her, head subtly atilt as she looks down. The words are rough-edged, but sound honest, "What if it was now?"

That's when calloused hands come to rest, one at her hip and the other curled in the front of her shirt, and chapped lips meet hers, more familiar than they aren't. There's a moment of desert sage, machine oil, and copper on a shared breath, the taste of moonshine as she's kissed, drawn in closer. 

She almost follows through with it. Almost lets it go further than that, become what the other wants it to be. There's a part of her that wants to say yes. That wants to turn back the years they've been like this, go back to how it used to be before the omnium - before it all went to shit. _That will always want this in some small way_ , she recognizes.

Two, even three years ago? She would have leapt at this chance. The distance between them hadn't been her doing, after all. Not at first. And then it was the armor that she used to protect herself, make sure that her heart wasn't exposed again.

Now she's here.

And it's not enough.

It's not enough anymore. Not when she thinks about how things have been these last few months. There's a memory of whiskey and mint on her teeth that she doesn't want to drown out in red dust and moonshine. She sinks back, a hand pressed to the flat of the other's stomach as she does, not allowing the Jaeden to follow after her. 

So instead of _yes_. Instead of throwing the lever that makes this all go back to how it was once, she lets that red dust slip through her fingers. 

"It isn't," is what she says, hating the way the words shiver a little at the edges. 

Jaeden is still close, close enough that she can hear the low, displeased sound that emanates from the other's chest at her words. 

What else can she say? Jaeden doesn't need to know that Moira is different.

She doesn't need to know that Moira O'Deorain isn't like going home. It's like pulling river stones out of the deepest point of a dark river, dredging them out of cold water to set them on the banks, and building a foundation backwards in increments that neither of them understand, but that don't matter. Because they've already seen the things that live in the dark water, anyway.

She doesn't know what they're doing. What they're building. But she knows now, that she wants to see what it will become.

"You love her," it's rough-edged, but not accusatory, acknowledging in the blunt way that Jaeden so often is. 

It's not a question that she has to answer. 

Those firm-boned features are riddled with conflicting emotion for a moment, before the taller woman simply leans in and places a kiss to her forehead instead, exhaling slowly there before assuring in a low voice, "We're good, bunny."

Jaeden turns from her then, walking back from the living quarters out toward the Scrapyard.

She doesn't follow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter writing music:   
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_tJRoAamyI


	23. i believe that you wanted to run with the light of the fire, the sound of the gun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ** Talon fam  
> ** Wingman Sombra & BFF Gabe  
> ** Terrible Junker antics  
> ** Unexpected visitors

Saturday evening, swiftly tilting toward Sunday morning, she decides to climb the wall. It's poetic really, in a way. She was already climbing the proverbial wall already. Just as night starts to crest on the horizon, when the heavens are painted in rich swathes of colour from a warm tangerine to dark amaranthine, the setting sun a sliver of red and gold that casts long shadows over red cliffs, Jack Vargas hauls herself up to the top of the Junkertown fortifications with her comm unit, a leather jacket, and a bottle of old whiskey she stole from behind Wolf's bar, a handful of credits left in its place. 

It's a breathtaking view from this high up, and she sits at the very edge to take it all in, boots dangling over the edge of a dark, green-painted wall mottled with rust, dents, and scrapes from incoming pulsefire. Uncapping the bottle, she takes a sip directly from it, resting her fingers lightly on the neck as she looks toward the stars, just starting to peek through the darker sections of the sky. Soon, they are all the brighter, glistening against a velvet night, breathtaking pinpoints of silver light that glint off the river that snakes far below, drifting in dark eddies around the foot of the cliffs. 

There's no wind, and as the darkness sets in fully, gooseflesh prickles over her coppery skin, her shirt pulled up in the back so as not to rub against her new ink - hints of sunset red, orange, and jade detailing a medusa beneath her shoulder-blades, richly outlined in black. She had been considering it for a while, had Danny draw up the design over the last few days. He had just finished it. The thinner, more delicate lines of the newly rendered magpie on the inside of her forearm were more spur of the moment - an almost geometric pattern, the bird in flight with pinions wide, twined through with red cord with an arrow beneath it, the stone tip of which rests nearly at her wrist. 

She brushes her knuckles lightly over it, feeling the subtle sting that elicits, and then tips back another modest sip of whiskey, feeling warmth bloom in her chest for it. When she releases her hold on the bottle, her hand searches for the comm unit like a bad habit. 

No new messages. 

Fuck it.

She starts to tap one out herself, glancing up from time to time between the lines to watch the movement of the stars. 

ja.vargas: i miss you  
ja.vargas: im sitting out on the wall with a bottle of shitty whiskey  
ja.vargas: the stars are real bright tonight  
ja.vargas: did you ever read cummings  
ja.vargas: here is the deepest secret nobody knows  
ja.vargas: (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)  
ja.vargas: and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

\--- 

When the comm besides her emits a soft chime, it's more out of habit than anything else that Olivia picks it up, turning it over in her hand to scan over the messages incoming. _Definitely not her comm_. There isn't half enough French caught in the automatic translator she coded, for starters. A sound of mirth escapes her nonetheless, and she glances over from her screens to elbow the man sitting in the seat beside her, interrupting his review of...she doesn't really care, honestly. This promises to be much more entertaining.

"Hey. Check this out, Muerte," she confides, nodding toward the comm as she passes it to him.

He gets about a line in before he does the smart thing, or at least the second smartest thing to _not_ reading O'Deorain's messages, and turns to look over his shoulder at the geneticist in the back of the transport. It's a moot point. Moira has been asleep for at least an hour, her jacket folded up to form a cushion between her cheek and the window, coppery lashes fluttering occasionally as if in a dream. Those freckled features are rife with exhaustion. They're all tired. It's been a month, really. 

Hunting down Bartholeme and his associates was like attempting to stomp out a nest of ants. Every time they had one cluster dealt with, another two seemed to swarm elsewhere. 

His crimson eyes searching the remainder of the messages once he's ascertained that their medic is still asleep, Gabe makes a low sound in his chest and affirms in a quiet, raspy timbre, "That's kind of cute, actually. Huh."

He nods toward her and confides, "We end all this, we should see if the doc will bring her around, meet everyone."

Olivia nods at that, slipping fingers through her dark, purple-tipped hair as she scrolls upward on the screen, only to frown when she reaches the top of it. In a soft cadence, she observes, "Tch. You know Akande told her not to..." She gestures toward the comm unit, "No wonder she's been wound so tight."

With a furtive look back toward the taller woman in the back, Olivia narrows her eyes faintly in thought, then sinks down in her seat comfortably, nestling her shoulder to Gabe's and propping her feet up on the seat in front of her as she confirms, " _I'm_ going to answer. What should I say?"

With a mischievous smile curling over her features, she observes, "Something that sounds like la bruja, Gabe. We have to beat _this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart_. No pressure."

He makes another low sound in his chest as he sets aside the briefing, looking down at the comm unit with her for a moment. Contemplative, his dimly crimson eyes distant as he mulls it over, he ventures, "How about...shit. What was it she said on Horizon?"

"Something dramatic," Olivia murmurs back. "I was un poco ocupado." She lifts her shoulder slightly, confiding with amusement, "Unless you wanted to deal with Reinhardt's shields."

He snorts at that, bumping his shoulder to hers lightly. Scratching lightly at the scruff at his jawline, he confirms, "We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars. Think that was it."

"Es perfecto," she confides in return, delight in her eyes as she starts to type the message in, only to find the comm removed from her grasp.

"No, not like that," Gabe confides as he observes the pending message a moment, then erases it. When he starts to tap it out again, much more slowly than she had managed, he asks her conversationally, "You even read the shit she sends you, Liv? You have to make the sentences right. Upper case. Lower case. Punctuation."

Waiting patiently for him to finish, she hits send when the comm is returned to her, confirming his suspicions with a glib, "Only the flattering ones."

"So none of them," he chuckles quietly.

m.odeorain: We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

"It's not my fault you're both so _old_ ," she confides back, her chin finding its way comfortably to his shoulder as they await a response. "No sense of humor."

ja.vargas: the whole series of my life appeared to me as a dream; i sometimes doubted if indeed it were all true, for it never presented itself to my mind with the force of reality

Gabe scans it over with her, then emits a raspy sound of amusement in his chest, affirming afterwards, "You're on your own for that one, Liv. What does that _even mean_?"

A mischievous smile curled over her features, she confirms for him, "It means she misses her girl, Muerte." With a quick glance toward Moira in the back of the transport, she observes, "Cute."

This should be easy. She pulls up several screens at once, her neural implants emitting a faintly lavender light when she turns back toward the comm and coaxes the deleted archive of messages from it, her tech piecing back together the scattered and encrypted pieces to correlate the data from them.

"Some of these are..." the hacker whistles softly, the corners of her grin curling even further. Fanning her features with one hand, she looks sidelong at Gabe to confide, "Good for you, bruja. _Get it_."

His laugh a little louder than she anticipated, though softened by the raspy, hollow nature of his voice, and she responds by elbowing him and chiding, "Shh."

It only takes her a few seconds to pull up one of the security camers on the interior of the geneticist's home after she determines the source of the messages peppered throughout their conversations. Zooming in on a bookshelf in the sitting room, she hums quietly to herself, correlates the data from the spines of several books in a broad sweep, and runs through the quotations she finds before confirming, "How about you there."

m.odeorain: A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.  
ja.vargas: what is that  
m.odeorain: It is a quotation from Oscar Wilde.

She can feel his shoulders shaking with silent laughter beside her, a hand over his mouth as he shakes his head slowly, informs her, "That sounds _exactly_ like some shit she'd say. Matter-of-fact. In that dry voice she gets."

"Pass me a cola, Muerte?" Olivia asks, slinging an arm around his shoulders as she looks over the comm. With a sly wink for him, she teases, "I know. Es perfecto. Being this clever and charming is thirsty work."

The can is cold, condensation already beading on the outside of it when she cracks it open, and it's as much the temperature and the effervessence of the bubbles that start to wake her up as it is the caffeine hitting her system. With a pleased look about her, she mouths out the next set of words as they come to her, tapping them into the comm.

m.odeorain: Send me a vid of the stars, Jacqueline.

With a snort of incredulity beside her, his expression nothing if not amused at this point, Gabe asks pointedly, " _Really_ , Liv?"

She winks at him once more, taking another sip of cola before retorting, "It's romantic. She's going to love it." 

"This the sort of shit you send Lacroix?" Gabe asks then, crimson eyes alight with mirth. 

She leans over toward him to whisper teasingly, "Ask a little louder. My bets are araña uses one bullet for yes, two for no."

ja.vargas has attached a vidfile.

Hitting play on it with her thumb, Olivia tilts her head subtly to the side and takes in the panoramic view of the Outback at night. It's pretty. So is the Junker sitting up on that wall. Not that she would have guessed, in probably a million years, that Moira 'dated a woman who dresses like an actual angel' O'Deorain would be into leather jackets and tattoos. The lipstick, that was just a given.

"She's _cute_ ," Olivia murmurs, an impish look about her as she looks toward Gabe and teases, "I'm going to hack my way right into her heart, Gabe. This is the Lord's work."

"Don't let Lacroix hear you," he retorts with a gruff amusement.

Humming a soft tune as she doubles down on her behavior, she grins over at Gabriel and confides with conviction, "Lacroix would share." Then, pointing a thumb back over her shoulder at the slumbering medic, "She's going to wake up engaged, with a homestead in Ireland, and two cats. Dogs?"

"She seem like more of a cat person or a dog person to you, Gabe?" she follows with, grinning from ear to ear as she preps her next message. 

He's laughing now, an eerily raspy sound he fights to keep quiet. After a moment, a hand pressed to his chest, Gabe answers with seeming authority on the matter, "Dogs. Used to have dobermans when we were still Blackwatch. Bram and Bran. Really good dogs."

"Do...you...like...dogs..." Olivia words out slowly, tapping away at the keyboard. Then with her best Irish impression, "Jacqueline."

m.odeorain: Do you like dogs, Jacqueline?  
ja.vargas: got one now actually  
ja.vargas: thought id bring him to oasis when i can go home again  
ja.vargas has attached an image.  
ja.vargas: his name is barrel

"Oh, that's a fucking dingo if I ever saw one," Gabe asserts with a hoarse chuckle, his hand finding the can of cola in hers and relieving her of it. With a slow sip of the beverage, he points toward the comm and observes, "Just answer Barrel. One word. With an italicized question mark at the end."

When she squints at him, he replies simply, "We message while she's at work."

m.odeorain: Barrel _?_  
ja.vargas: its a perfectly good name  
ja.vargas: he also answers to yellow  
ja.vargas: good boy  
ja.vargas: and hey asshole

With a curious look at the attached picture, Olivia inquires of him, "Looks like a street dog."

"Absolutely a dingo," he affirms without question.

m.odeorain: Is that a dingo, Jacqueline?

"I just want to know, now," Olivia confides with a grin. Then, looking over as he opens a can, "Are those peanuts?"

He passes them over to her after taking a handful for himself. Silent for a moment, he seems to realize something and inquires of her, "How long you been reading the doc's messages?"

Crunching on her newly acquired snack, she merely peers at him for a long moment, only answering when she's washed down the peanuts with a sip of cola, "We all need someone watching our back. Some more than others." Wrinkling her nose, she adds, "I just want her to be happy, Gabe. All this nonsense going on...you see how she gets."

ja.vargas: only a little one

"Told you," Gabe states matter-of-factly, reaching over for another half-handful of peanuts.

ja.vargas: how are you holding up  
ja.vargas: are things any better

"What's a sexy way of saying 'not getting laid on the regular is making me pricklier than usua...'" there's a hand on her shoulder. A cold, talon-nailed, lavender-tinted hand that she knows _exactly_ who it belongs to. When she looks up slowly, a wide smile curling over her features, Moira looks critical of the situation, no more rested before the impromptu nap in the back of the transport.

So she does the first thing that she can think of. She takes another handful of peanuts, drops the comm in Gabe's lab, and greets, "Hola."

And then she translocates into the belly of the transport, down into the storage area where she knows Amelie will be, and abandons her compatriot to take ownership of what should be a shared fate. 

Gabe shakes a few more peanuts out of the can, tossing them back and chewing thoughtfully for a moment before he picks up the comm. He offers a simple, "It's not what it looks like."

She doesn't have to say anything, scarlet and blue eyes narrowing faintly on him, and he confirms, "Alright, so it's exactly what it looks like."

"Akande requested that I entertain minimal communication with her until such a time as Bartholeme is apprehended," Moira observes with obvious displeasure, the rich cadence of her voice permeated with it as she reaches for the comm over his shoulder. 

"Yeah, well it's making you a miserable piece of shit," Gabe retorts as the transport sets down, then flips open the comm again to hit a few buttons. Pointedly looking up at her as he activates a call, he says, "Oh, will you look at that. My thumb slipped."

"Tell him it was my fault, I don't give a shit," he observes, tossing the comm at her like it's a live grenade. "Talk to her."

She watches him for a long moment once the line activates, then lifts it to her ear as the transport settles down, pretending not to notice the look he's giving her.

\---- 

It has always been her preference to keep these matters private. And becoming involved with a Junker, with anyone really, had not precisely been the plan. Not at first. There is certainly attraction there, that much is not deniable. But the easiness of it, the slippery slope that led from Rialto to her office, that became languid mornings and coffee with cinnamon in her kitchen, that had not been anticipated. Jacqueline, over the past few months, has evolved into a constant, warm and brash presence on her periphery. Unforseen, but not unwelcome. 

The mornings that she has spent since the other's imprisonment have been altered. While her bed is cold more often than not, she had become accustomed to the occasional warmth the Junker brings to it. Dark hair over a coppery shoulder inked with the Hydra constellation, a pleased sound for her every time she burrows closer. The faint, warm scent of citrus and machine oil, clove and leather, a hint of metal that lingered in her sheets for a week after the other's imprisonment.

Now. Now it has been a month of absence, and while prose would say that it makes the heart grow fonder, she would contend that it also makes the also makes the flesh frustrated and the mind lonely. When the vidscreen flickers to life, Moira lets out a slow, fluid breath that she didn't realizes she had been holding, feels a modicum of the tension in her shoulders ease. 

"Hello, rabbit," Moira ventures with a slow, pleased smirk that curls the corner of her lips. Her voice feels lower, darker than she imagined it would in the dusk, but she drawls the words out with satisfaction nonetheless. At some point in the last month, she realizes, she has started to consider Jacqueline to be hers in some fashion. What to do with that.

Their surroundings could not be more disparate. The bench she rests on is shrouded beneath the dark foliage growing up the gazebo, sheltered behind the safehouse in Auckland. The air is thick and warm even this late at night, and the constant thrum of insects chirps through the vegetation that surrounds the walled estate. She strikes a match, bringing it to the cigarette perched between her lips, and puffs gently when it catches to ensure it remains lit. 

Jacqueline is sprawled back easily, head propped upon what looks to be a leather jacket, her coppery complexion stark against the sheet metal beneath it. It does not take much effort to determine where she is. Painted a deep green with weather-proofed paint, the wall is kissed in rust where bullets have scraped and pitted the metal, mottled further where water has bled the orange-red over the surface. Dark hair splayed around her, dark eyes struck with points of silver from the stars overhead, the Junker looks like some puckish creature descended from the old world to tempt her. She can pick out the outline of fresh ink on the other's forearm, the hint of a scar above dark red lips, the little curl to the corner of them.

"Say it again," Is what the other responds smoothly, and it strikes her how much stronger Jacqueline's accent is, Australia written into the rise and fall of the other's voice. 

The corner of her lips curls further, that smirk widening on angular, freckled features as she repeats more slowly, "Hello, rabbit."

"Mm," it's a soft noise made in the Junker's chest, the little stretch that accompanies it that gets her. A hand rakes through dark hair, and those dark eyes find hers as the other confides, "God, I miss you."

That voice is so warm it sounds like drinking whiskey feels. She misses the way it sounds when it's frayed around the edges. 

"You're up on the wall," Moira observes around her cigarette, the taste of mint and smoke rolling through her teeth with an inhalation. 

"Mm," that sound once more as the Junker's smile curves a little. She enjoys it a little too much. How Jacqueline looks at her isn't helping the sentiment. "Where are you, babe? Cicadas are loud."

She is loathe to answer, the smoke in her mouth tasting a bit bitter for a moment as she advises, "Auckland."

"Auckland," Jacqueline repeats. Then that bloody sound again. There's a glint of amusement in those dark eyes, then. The Junker knows _exactly_ what she's doing.

"Cease, before I-" Moira starts and then stops, the threat that she may come over there holding significantly less weight when they are miles apart. Her countenance says it just as easily as her words would have, subtly imperious though the smirk has not faded in the slightest. 

She watches a slip of teeth reveal themselves in a coy smile as Jacqueline drawls out pointedly, "Oh, I _wish you would_." There's the click of a tongue to the roof of a mouth before the Junker teases slowly, "Auckland isn't that far. You could be here and back."

One of those coppery shoulders shrugs, that smile even a little more mischievous. 

"Shameless," is all she can counter with, mismatched eyes sweeping over the other before she sinks back in her seat and draws another deep lungful of smoke. "What are you thinking right now?"

"That you are absolutely, criminally gorgeous," Jacqueline answers back, dark eyes searching hers with intent. There's a quirk to the corner of the other's lips as that gaze flicks toward her own and then back up to hold her mismatched eyes once more. "That I'd give my left arm to be that cigarette."

There's a moment when that's spoken that she has the distinct thought _Auckland isn't that far_. When she exhales a nebulous cloud of smoke it twists in the dark air before her, stirred when she replies, "We must all make sacrifices, rabbit."

"Matter of opinion," Jacqueline responds, folding an arm behind her head as she looks up at the vidscreen. A warm smile curves over her features before she confides openly, "I love when you call me that."

She likes calling her that. Is about to confess to such when the Junker shifts up on an elbow instead, dark hair falling over her shoulder like the currents of some black river as she locks eyes with Moira and confides, "Why don't you come to Australia and call me that?"

"I would do _far worse than that_ , were I in Australia," Moira counters in a lower cadence, serious in her confession. 

There's the click of a tongue to the roof of the Junker's mouth, before the other retorts in a smooth cadence, "You promise?"

She leans forward subtly, mismatched eyes set pointedly to the other's dark, and replies in a huskier timbre than before, "I promise, rabbit. "

"Tell me about it," Jacqueline proposes then, bold as brass. A dark brow arches, the corner of the other's lips curls, and the Junker observes, "I've got nothing but time."

This woman.

Angular countenance sharp in the limited light, she flicks a calculating look over those coppery features, reading a wealth in them. Flicking the ash from the end of her cigarette, she takes one last, long drag from it and exhales the smoke slowly so as to relish the action, then grinds it out on the railing. 

"Ná nocht d’fhiacla go bhféadair an greim do bhreith," she observes, scarlet and blue eyes holding darker ones. This is new territory, but she cannot say she dislikes it. And if the other's expression is indicative, the Gaeilge was effective in its intent.  
** Don't bare your teeth until you can bite

"Put the comm in your ear," she instructs simply, rising to her feet. "I am not going to carry you inside on vidscreen. But, perhaps. If you ask me nicely enough, Jacqueline. I could be convinced to tell you about it _at length_. You have until I reach my room for the evening to make a convincing argument."

The steady hint of rose that's rising to those coppery features is an assured victory, as is the slow exhalation as the other breathes out, "Oh my god."

She flicks a scarlet and blue glance over the other's features, confiding lowly, "Perhaps I'll give you permission to say that later. If you deserve it, rabbit."

"You are absolutely criminal," Jacqueline responds with a laugh, raking a hand through her dark hair. "No wonder they consider Talon terrorists. I'll switch us over t-" It trails off then, the other's expression quizzical of a sudden, as dark eyes meet hers with the question, "Did you hear that?"

Moira tilts her head, scarlet and blue eyes half-lid as she listens for a moment as if to discern something from the open line. After a second, she shakes her head. Then she does hear it, a faint sound of stone skittering off stone nearby, through the other's comm.

A brief curiosity touches her when Jacqueline levers up to her feet, comm still in hand, and grasps the railing to lean precariously over the edge of the wall - far further than could possibly be safe, or advised. 

There's a tremor in that voice when the other whispers, "Oh, _fuck me running_."

She can see a dim flicker, moonlight off of something in the distance, like the flicker of an animal's eyes in direct illumination. More animals than she could count. No. Dread creeps into her bones, settles like a tangible, skeletal hand on her shoulders. Optics. 

There are omnics climbing the cliffs. 

More than she can reasonably count at a glance. Then, something on the cliff below turns its head, looks up, its scarlet-lit optic reflecting eerily in the moonlight. It's _massive_.

Jacqueline takes one, then two steps back from the edge, draws the comm up to look at her and she can see, for perhaps the first time since she met the Junker in the basement of the R&D building, _tangible fear_ there. 

"I love you," is all Jacqueline says, that voice tight. And then flicks off the comm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I solemnly swear this arc will have a happy ending, there's just a pending shitshow first  
> I always intend them to have a cute conversation and it always turns out terrible
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bA_KuRJulWk


	24. loud voices calling for revenge, cold metal triggers on their fingertips

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ** Junkers play Pacific Rim  
> ** Sombra plays Need for Speed  
> ** Made up omnic models/lore, wildly inaccurate  
> ** Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots???  
> ** Next chap soon, needs a little polish first ;)

Her boots thrum off the sheet metal in the Outback night, sweat a sheen on her coppery skin and lungs burning from the dry, scrubland air by the time she reaches the watchtower. Jack throws herself up the ladder two, then three rungs at a time until she hauls herself up the top. The hum in the air is the only warning she receives before an energy blade arcs through the air at her, and she simply lets herself drop, managing to catch one of the rungs halfway down to stop herself from plummeting to the walkway, or worse, over the wall and to the bottom of the cliffs. 

Irukandji.

She doesn't need to look when something warm and wet hits her shoulder, rolls down the back of it. It smells like copper. Whoever was in the watchtower isn't on watch anymore. They never will be again.

Sliding down the remainder of the ladder, she all but throttles herself down the wall at breakneck speed, hearing the clatter of metal hit the panels beside her. It's a dangerous game. One that she and the others used to play as children. Leap from support to support. Panel to panel. Catch your hands on the thick edges, not the ones that will take a finger with them. 

Her hands are scraped raw in places by the time her boots hit the ground. But she makes it. That's the important part.

It's only just in time. The echoes of a concussive blast ricochet off the metal buildings like a boom of thunder, leaving the walls trembling in their wake, and she watches as the lights of Junkertown flicker and then gutter out to leave them all in the dark. Muffled voices sound from nearby. She ducks behind a bent panel as more metal clatters down around her, a viscous violet liquid seeping from the shattered darts where they hit the ground, shatter off the wall. 

Irukandji are not large. Not much taller than four and a half feet, but insidiously dangerous. The biochemical that they utilize paralyzes the nervous system. She's heard some of the Junker vets compare it to drowning in your own body, unable to breathe or move until an antidote is administered. And she certainly doesn't have any of that shit handy. They work fast. She needs to not let it touch her. 

The sound of metal limbs finding purchase on scrap metal echoes above her. Her hand finds the handle of the knife in her boot, the creak of the leather hilt comforting in her palm as she waits. 

"This is not a drill," Tas's voice booms out on the old loudspeaker system, a back-up plan in case of EMP. "Solar farms two and three are dark. We have multiple omnics over the east wall. Irukandji model. Two Bastions on the west parapet with heavy fire incoming."

The report of munitions fire in the distance is deafening, a rattle of metal on metal that she hears exchanged soon after for the duller sound of metal through flesh and bone. 

The chances that none of them make it out of this are increasing by the second.

She makes herself smaller, tightens her grasp on the knife once the blade points downward. Waits. Count to ten, Jack. Count to ten again. She taps it softly against the side of her leg with the other hand. 

And when metal feet hit the ground beside her, she lunges forward.

You have to know where to rake with the serrated edge to cut the lines, the ones that carry power fluid through the central nervous system of an Irukan omnic. Her mother taught her that. Had dragged one of them into the garage when it wandered too close to the homestead and pointed out all the places that it could be made to bleed until it stopped moving. She remembers standing between Kamaka and Paora, listening to it chitter softly to itself in the old code the Outback models sometimes use.

It's years old knowledge, but it serves her well, and when she catches it just right, that metal chassis drops like a puppet with its strings cut. The spray of green-blue fluid over the front of her shirt, all too hot on her skin, will burn if she leaves it too long - so she scoops up a handful of dusty red earth and uses it to scrub the omnic's blood free. It smells acrid. Red earth and a bitingly chemical scent.

Crouching down when she nears the street, she can pick out a few still bodies sprawled in the center. The moon is out. That's their only solace at this point. Otherwise they're all just alone in the dark, wondering when an omnic will tear into a home or a blade will tear through the flesh. There will be more dead before the end of the night. The ones who are old, infirm, in some cases young. The high or inebriated. The ones who don't remember the drills they've all learned since they were old enough to walk, just in case something like this happened again. 

The ones who can't scrap.

Jack waits for a break in the turret fire overhead, then skirts the building, clinging to the wall in the shadows. Low and close, the safest way to pick her way back toward the Scrapyard.

Back to the Jackrabbit.

One house at a time.

\--- 

_I love you._

How ironic that it would be the last thing Moira heard the Junker say. She replays it, over and over in her head as she paces inside the safehouse, making a circuit from one wall to behind the chair that Olivia is settled in, an endless route to and fro. They spent far too short a time in pleasant conversation, and it had been warm, easier than it hadn't been. And then it had all become dust in her hands. The warm smile traded for the fear in dark eyes. The tremor in a voice that moments before had murmured pleasantly for her in the night.

If Jacqueline Vargas dies in Junkertown, she will tend to every last member of Bartholeme's cadre herself. It will be a long, lingering thing. She will take no satisfaction in it, but the debt will be paid.

 _I love you_.

The sound of it is insidious in her ear. It lingers like strands of metal, twisted and twined inside her skull into a web that she cannot untangle. It burns in the musculature of her arms and back, just beneath the skin. She knows that it's stress, the nerves over-active from the tension that's wrapped itself wire-tight in her posture. It's been _years and miles_ since she's felt like this, far away in Gibraltar, when she watched an angel fall from the sky on tattered wings.

This is different. She cannot _catch_ Jacqueline. Not in Junkertown.

Jacqueline is no more an angel than she is, no celestial being sent by some Christian God. She finds the Junker akin to her namesake in the old Irish mythos - the rabbit, a shape-shifter. A trickster, slipping between the polished streets of Oasis, Rialto, and the red dust roads of Junkertown. Warm and languid in her bed, less so in other places, smoke and metal, and an edge of laughter, mischief glittering behind dark eyes.

In some traditions, rabbits were sacred to warrior queens and gods. Her mother used to tell her that they burrowed beneath the earth to carry messages. From the living to the dead. From mortals to the fair folk.

 _I love you_.

The message Jacqueline brought her howls like the wind on the Aillte an Mhothair, batters at the stone bluffs of her resolve like the waves of an icy, green salt sea.  
** Cliffs of Moher

There is a small part of her, a habitual and instinctive part, that wishes the solution to the situation were as easy as taking a hand and curling fingers around the handle of a sterilized scalpel, excising all the places that she feels those words too deeply. Another simply wishes to hold onto it, worries that it is too fragile to be held in her hands, will perish as the other may - alone and in the dark, running through the streets above red stone cliffs.

Akande's voice is deep and resonant at the head of the table when he looks up from his review of Council reports to observe disgustedly, "They have nothing. Olivia?"

The hacker is eating peanuts and sipping cola in between sifting screens, the dim glow of her neural implants casting over the windowpanes behind her. At the question, Olivia shakes her head and counters, "Uno momento. Parsing. There's an old omnic code coming through, I'm tracking it through Bartholeme's H.Q. to the source and attempting decryption."

Amélie is almost impossible to distinguish from a statue, standing near the window behind the hacker, occasionally glancing out into the backyard as if hostiles may apparate there. Never at ease. Always on watch.

"Shit. Shit shit shit," the exclamation is not typical for Olivia, nor is the way her hands hit the table for a moment, almost knocking over the cola before Amélie reaches over with swift reflexes to steady it. "It's an old military code. Pre-war. They have an decommed omnic model - it was used for deep sea mining before the Crisis. Cold laser, adaptive camouflage, part of an environmental initiative not to disturb the native sea life."

Another screen pops up, revealing an omnic with the same dimly red eyes she saw before. Massive on par with the Titan mecha that was used to destroy Boklovo. She draws to a stand-still, not an inch away from Amélie's shoulder as she leans over the back of the chair. 

"Decommed a year after they were built due to instability in the fission core," the screens are flying by again, Olivia's eyes intent on them as the hacker's neural implants coruscate dimly. "Irradiated the Great Australian Bight when one overloaded." She whips around in the chair toward Akande, "It's instructions from Bartholeme to the Australian omnium. Get it to the top of the cliffs, connect it to the power-grid. Overload the lines like la bruja's girl did in the warehouse?"

"Apagando las luces," Olivia observes pointedly, then flicks a look from Akande to where Moira has stopped behind the chair. "No one human makes it out."  


Gabriel is the first to speak up, his voice raspy and hollow as he shrugs into his jacket and starts to secure the fastenings on the front, "You've been wanting a heavy for the team. More connections." He nods toward Akande, catching up his bone-white mask from the end of the table. "Buy some loyalty with blood, you just might get one. The shit is that mecha called, Liv?"

"Sovereign?" the hacker volunteers, and Moira tracks the flick of violet eyes from their leader to her and back once more. Helpfully, as if attempting to sway the conversation, "There's also Wrecking Ball. I wonder if he likes peanuts."

She doesn't like the look on Akande's features as he mulls over the information, the heavy weight of leadership that she knows has him weighing whether or not this is an acceptable risk. It isn't. They both know that, down in their bones. He asks in a deep, resonant timbre, "What is the window of opportunity we would have to intercept?"

"You let me drive, jefe?" Olivia sinks back in her seat, fingertips drumming on the edge of the darkly gleaming table. "Twenty-five minutes. It'll take it thirty for it to get up the wall. Five minute window on access to the cliffs. Maybe ten after that for them to connect it and crank the power."

Every second now is critical, and she can feel them ticking by one at a time, slipping through her fingers like the promise of something that could have been.

When he looks up at them, it is not the decision she expected. It is not unacceptable risks and empty condolences. 

Akande Ogundimu rises from his seat at the head of the table and asserts lowly, "Get on the transport."

\---

When Jack skids in behind the barricades, narrowly avoiding the pulsefire that rattles off the metal, Danny catches her by the belt and pulls her the last two inches behind them, his shield upraised as another barrage of fire chases in to strike off of it. Her ribs are aching, every inch of her sore, bruised in places where cutting an alleyway or darting through the streets necessitated a scrap with one of the smaller Irukandji or a dive from turret fire. Resting there for only a second, just long enough to suck in a thankful breath, she claps Danny on one tattooed shoulder and levers back up to her feet.

She needs to find Jaeden.

It isn't hard once she's inside the Scrapyard. She follows the pools and puddles of green-blue blood that spill over the rusted floor, her boots ringing softly off the metal as she picks around the wreckage of a unit of omnics that decided this was the place to stage a hit. Her hair is damp from sweat, plastered to the nape of her neck and clinging to her brow, so she combs it hastily back from her face and ties it in a knot at the base of her skull as she jumps down the stairs and then up the second step toward where Jaeden will be. Where the Queensguard have assembled.

Armed and armored to the teeth, the metal and leather that covers them scuffed, scraped, burned from previous altercations with all manner of omnics and scrappers, they stand ready for war, anger written in every line of their bodies, entrenched like iron in their muscle and bone. 

Tas is there. Maggie. Vance, though blood coils around a bullet wound in his arm. Her mother, her second eldest brother, Kamaka. Shouldering through them with little regard for the consequences, the scent of leather and sweat is prominent in the crowded space. She doesn't wait for the Queen to stop barking orders to walk up and catch her by one of the leather straps on her armor, jerking hard to make Jaeden face her. 

"Stonefish on the eastern cliffs," is all she breathes out when the taller woman rounds on her, hazel eyes searching her darker ones. She sees a flicker of surprise in them, then anger, though the latter does not seem directed at her. Relinquishing her hold on the other at that, she braces her hands on her knees and attempts to catch her breath, elaborating, "It's about halfway up."

If it reaches the top, this is all for nothing.

"How sure are you?" Jaeden's voice is all but a growl between teeth, smoldering with fire and the promise of pain for whatever crosses her path. 

"A hundred and fucking ten percent," she breathes out slowly, slowly straightening to stand upright once more. While she has the other's attention, she observes, "The Irukan are pulling power cables in the market district. If they..." Searching those hazel eyes intently, she all but demands, "You need to tell them to _stop trying to bring the power up now_."

" _Fuck_ ," the Queen all but barks out, slamming the side of one gauntlet into the sheet metal behind her and whipping around on Vance. "Get down to the grid and tell the mechanics to full stop. Have them slap the genny on the lift instead - tell them to start funneling people to the flats. I'm not losing every fucking Junker if this goes south."

He darts off into the distance without so much as a word.

There are no options here. Not with amount of omnics crawling through the streets. Not with a fucking Stonefish. Australia's answer to deep sea mining, an amphibious construction with shift camouflage so as not to disturb sea life, heavy armor plating, and a cold-sourced mining laser. They were decommed before the Omnic Crisis due to their instable fission cores, which had irradiated a few miles of the coast and deep ocean before the damage was contained. 

If the omnics successfully overcharge it, it will overload and detonate. There's no coming back from that. 

It'll take Junkertown with it.

It isn't hard, as she listens to the other speak, to imagine why any of them would follow their Queen into battle. To imagine how she assumed that role in the first place. Jaeden is tall and muscular, intimidating in her armor and warpaint, one hand curled around the haft of an energy blade that is coated liberally in green-blue blood. Those firm-boned features are fierce, the crest of blue hair above them coated in red dust from the scuffle in the Scrapyard. She looks like a wolf prowling, rallying its pack for what must come. The sacrifices they will all be called on to make.

In some ways, Jaeden was born for leadership. Her parents, buried out in the scrub, had both been ALF before omnics took them. As was most of her extended family. Her paramilitary heritage shows strongest when she commands. It's an easy thing to her, the authority that comes with it instant.

"Viper and Watchdog," the Queen nods towards two of the 'guard. "Take the western wall. Divide the patrol units and funnel the Irukan toward the Scrapyard. We have battlements set up. Maggie, I want your gunners behind them on a diagonal. They come in, you cut them down. They'll have to push hard if they want to breach. Don't give them a fucking inch."

Then to Waimarie, "I want snipers up in the supports in five - four of yours on the interior of the 'yard. The rest wherever you want them stationed." Louder for the riflemen in the back, "Report in with Major Vargas for where to post up. You get a bead on an omnic, you fire unless she tells you to hold."

The thump of fists to chests sounds as they sling their guns over their shoulders. Jack receives a solemn nod from her mother before they, too, are gone. 

"Kamaka, put a knife or a gun in the hand of everyone sheltering who knows how to use one, down to the little ones. Station with them down in the vaults with the injured and help Wolf patch them," Jaeden jerks a hand toward the back of the Scrapyard. Where the treasure is kept. Then toward a cluster of scrappy youth and injured folk in the corner. "Trap it up if you need to. If anything non-human gets within sight, you have 'em shoot first and ask questions later."

A few of the younger ones head off to the vaults with her brother, lanky teens helping the elderly and the infirm with a dogged resolution to see this through. She watches a boy no older than fourteen ratchet back the slide on a rifle and walk up to inform the Queen with a nod toward the rifleman in the supports already, "I can shoot. Better than some of them."

Jaeden pulls him nearer by the back of the head, looks him in the eyes as seriously as if he were much older than he is. After a moment, the other nods toward a poster on the far wall and says, "You hit that between the eyes, we'll put you up on the wall."

He does, with the dogged persistence of someone who came up down on the solar farms, where wild animals and roaming scavvers make that a necessity.

"Report up to Major Vargas," Jaeden observes, lifting her chin toward the far stairs. 

"Danny," the Queen addresses him last, "You're going to hate this. Cable down the cliffs and get Junkrat and Roadhog. Stay with them. Rounds on the solar farms until you have one secure, then cover our boys as they head down. Tell them their share of the vault and all's forgiven, if they back us up."

"Yes, ma'am," he retorts, displeasure in his eyes but a curt nod offered to his Queen before he makes his way toward the lift. 

Jaeden's firm-boned features radiate authority, hazel eyes glittering as she commands, "Mecha pilots, you know the drill. I want you in the streets. Provide cover so we can get our people in the 'yard, then up on the walls or down in the vaults."

"Don't let me down," she paces back and forth before the throne, prowling. "Who are you?"

"Junkers!" the retort roars through the Scrapyard.

"What are the rules, boys?" Jaeden barks out next, her fist slamming into the sheet metal again to make a loud, thunderous booms.

"No omnics. No mercy. Only the strong survive."

It rings out like a battle mantra through the Scrapyard. It is one.

"Don't let me down. Now fucking move," she calls out once more, and the last of them scatter, some towards the fighting in the distance, others toward their mechas to prepare. 

A hand catches Jack's upper arm and pulls her back, the pressure not uncomfortable, enough to halt her on her path toward the Jackrabbit. Waiting until she's certain that she has Jack's attention, Jaeden asks bluntly, hazel eyes searching hers, "Are you with me, bunny?"

She lifts her chin toward the Queen in turn, dark eyes glittering as she asks a little incredulously, "The fuck do you think, precious?"

Jaeden casts a thoughtful look over her, the hand on her arm releasing its grasp as they walk back toward the mechas. With certainty, the Queen observes, "We're going to hit the square hard. No one else has cloaks for shit, I want you forward scouting while we move. Hammond and I need to break through." There's seriousness in those firm-boned features as Jaeden states, "We're only going to get one fucking chance to get that thing off the wall. You know that, right?"

Bumping her shoulder to Jaeden's arm lightly, dark eyes set to hazel, Jack confirms, "I know that. Full disclosure. I have a little bit of a buzz going on."

That gets her first an incredulous look, then an incredulous laugh, a hand clapping her shoulder as Jaeden retorts, "You're such a dumb shit." Then, with a snort, "Don't get dead, bunny. I don't need your whiny bottom of a ghost haunting my goddamn Scrapyard."

Jack retorts with a cheeky smile, climbing up into the Jackrabbit to buckle in, "Maybe I'll haunt your pillow specifically. Just for old time's sake."

A rough laugh sounds from the other, Jaeden's head shaking as she pulls up into Sovereign in turn. 

It's oddly refreshing to laugh, looking down the barrel of a gun as they are.

It may be the last chance they get to at all.

\--- 

It turns out that Olivia had _not_ been exaggerating about her ability to coax extra speed out of the transport. Though, this ironically involved hacking into the vehicle's mainframe, dropping the entire cargo hold into the backyard of their safehouse, and keeping the needle just short of the red the entire time.

Moira O'Deorain has not been travel-sick since she was seven. This is a retread of territory she does not miss, and if the faint pallor to Gabriel's countenance is any indication, he is quite in the same proverbial boat.

The only one who seems unaffected is Amélie, who true to nature, has not shown any outward signs of discomfort. And Amélie Lacroix will never be the woman she once was. Not entirely.

But she wonders if the remainder of the Inner Council has the faintest inkling of how much of the neural conditioning has slipped, as she watches the slender, blue woman rest a hand on Sombra's shoulder and apply a faint, comforting pressure, offer a chilled can of cola with the other. When their sniper settles into the seat beside the pilot's chair, she doesn't need to hear what they're speaking of to know that it's more than their breakneck route to Junkertown.

It's written in the way Olivia's countenance eases slightly, how the other's energy becomes less frenetic and more determined as they barrel through the darkness in the direction of the mainland. 

Reassurance.

\--- 

Her shoulders are prickling with sweat and it stings where it runs down her back, trailing over the fresh ink on her back in a way that makes it feel raw. The rest of this? Instinctual, buckled into the Jackrabbit with the low hum of mecha all around her, smelling machine oil and hot metal and sweat. Sound dampeners up. Impact dampeners up. Cloak at eight-seven and holding. 

It made sense to send Jack in ahead. She has the least shimmer on a mecha. 

With each step forward in the Jackrabbit, she is reminded of the magnitude of the incursion, the destruction already unbelievable. It has never been this way before. Not this bad. Not this many omnics and not such a simplistic, yet singularly devastating plan. She skirts around a group of Irukandji marauding their way through the street by scaling up the wall, and can do little else but listen to the sound of them dragging someone out of their home, the sick sound of metal on flesh echoing off the metal walls. 

The screaming doesn't last long. 

Too many down below to tackle alone. Even in a mecha. Especially with the Stonefish on the wall.

As she nears the eastern wall, the hair on the back of her neck starts to prickle, and her dark eyes flick to the right to see the geiger counter on her mecha steadily ticking upward, a low, ominous crackle that increases with every long, loping stride of the Jackrabbit mecha along the outer wall. 

"Sovereign," she activates the radio to the dull crackle of static on the open line. "My geiger is going apeshit near the market. It's definitely here. I'm going up to get better eyes. Careful if you roll in, there's fucking Irukan _everywhere_."

The cloak is holding, the polymer that cuts the shimmer on her mecha doing exactly what she needs it to, and while she has had to coax some additional power into the feed here and there, the Jackrabbit is pulling about ninety percent phase by the time she reaches the top of the nearby wall, a scope of the market easy from this vantage point.

"I'm counting at least fifty in the eastern square. Ten Bullsharks. Two Spiders..." there's a rumbling rattle behind her, the sound of stones falling. Craning precariously over the edge, she can see the slow-moving form below, its massive red-orange optics dimly lit. Her eyes feel a little glassy when she looks down at it, and she sucks in a slow breath at the sight of the bristling spines and red, rock-patterned armor plating. "It's almost at the base of the wall."

"We're about to hit from the north," Jaeden's voice is low on the radio "Wait until we hit the square. Focus on the Irukan. You can't take a direct hit from a Stone in that."

"Can _you_?" Jack's voice is quiet, but tense.

"We're about to find the fuck out, aren't we?" comes the brash response from the Queen, and then pulsefire starts to pick up in the distance. She can see the Irukan shoring up in preparation for incoming heavies.

"They're fortifying north, hit north-east and you may be able to route through," Jack all but whispers into the comm. 

Dingo and Tas hit the front line like a crashing wave, a whir of motion and fire that blazes through the first two ranks of Irukandji as if they were tissue paper. That's when Sovereign and Hammond hit from the side, the rattling of munitions from the heavy mechas cutting down four of the Bullsharks in one go before they have so much as a chance to react. 

Beneath the layers of red drab bullet-playing, Jaeden is a goddamn titan in that mecha. Every movement wreaks devastation where it lands, from the sharp retort of the chaingun on one arm to the sweep of the scrap-shield on the other, the jagged edges cutting through a Spider omnic's chassis like a scythe cuts through wheat. 

Battering into a Bullshark with a backhand to knock it clean off it's feet, Sovereign pivots suddenly at the rumbling sound that fills the air, drawing back just in time for Hammond to roar in behind and slam down into the chassis, caving in the chest of the omnic in one blow before opening up with a cacophonous spray of artillery.

She kicks the Jackrabbit into movement, darting over the rooftops until she can fire down at the Irukandji from above, scattering the smaller omnics with sustained fire from the railgun and leaping from one rooftop to the next when they start to focus in on where the shots are coming from. She keeps them moving, inciting the chaos that Sovereign and the mecha contingent are feeding into the thick of the battle. 

A scatter-shot from a Bullshark nearly does her in, the omnic firing broad-range rounds up where the cloaked mecha is in a sustained hail of stone and metal before a solid blow from Jaeden's shield takes off its head. Some of the munitions strike through, a peppering of shrapnel that makes her question if the trickling down her shoulders now is blood or sweat. 

And then Dingo opens fire on her instead of the Irukandji.

"Aro, shields," she directs inside the mecha, and they flicker up just in time for the cloaking to drop when a second one rounds on her from further up on the wall, power-rerouted as she skids to a halt with the grinding sound of hot metal and screeching joints, then ducks behind a wall for cover. He hit something critical. Then into the radio, "Jae, that fucker just opened on me. Watch your fucking back."

"Settle ya own scores," the voice is gravelly on the line - Dingo. 

Jack focuses on getting the Jackrabbit functional. The gears are still smoking a bit when it starts on an auto-repair cycle and diverts power to critical areas. She bites out lowly into the radio, "You want to go _right now_ , motherfucker?"

He laughs into the radio, the cuts the connection. 

There's a dim ringing in her ears as he skirts around to fire another rapid burst of rounds, and she has to turtle under the shields when he opens up on one side and the Irukandji open on the other. Same rounds. The shield is in tatters by the time she fires up the railgun, mowing down a mess of nearby omnics and firing off two shots at Dingo's mecha that jut out of its armored chassis. There's something wet and warm on the side of her face that she's certain is blood. Nothing hurts enough to be more than superficial, but she's not certain how much longer she can keep this up unless there's a break in fire. 

Junkertown has exceedingly few standards for open combat, most of which are considered to be common sense. Not opening fire on her with armor-piercing rounds while they're fighting a fucking Stonefish and six thousand Irukan seems like it should make that fucking list.

Thankfully, there's a low rumble underfoot before another blast from Dingo's mecha can charge up, and Hammond rolls between them when it goes off. His mecha is an immense, well-armored, well-shielded sphere, and when she raps the knuckles of her mecha to his and the shot skitters off his external shields, she hears through the radio - _Profanity filter enabled. Fuck that guy._

Thank fucking god for Hammond. 

"Don't stop moving, your shields are fucking wrecked," Jaeden's voice barks out in her ear. 

She's already up and running, leaps overtop of the broken paneling onto the top of one of the metal supports on the wall to find a brief vantage point, then drops down onto the street to skirt around the Irukandji and open with rounds again. She can't stop. She can't, because if she stops running before the shields pull back up, a round from the Spider or one of the Bullsharks or _fucking Dingo_ is all it will take to punch a hole in the chest of her mecha and possibly through her. Thank god the Jackrabbit is fast, and thank god Jaeden scraps like a fucking demon.

There's a cacophony of gunfire on her tail, and when she hits the ground again, she pulls behind Sovereign to open up with the railgun, tearing through the Irukan attempting to climb up the back of Jaeden's mecha before darting back into cover. 

By the time the third building falls and the omnics haven't stopped pouring into the square, they know that this isn't going to end well. A massive red eye appears like a blood moon over the eastern wall, and then another, and her heart leaps into her chest, hammers there frenetically. They're fucked. 

It drops into the square with impact sufficient to nearly unfoot her mecha, the sheet metal walls rattling from the reverberations, and the Irukandji start to break formation, rushing to wire it up to the power grid. While they work, it fires up its cold laser, and she feels her skin prickle with gooseflesh when it almost shears the arm off Sovereign in one blow, then starts to charge up once more. Jae can't take many more hits like that.

Maybe not even one. 

"Hammond, get me in closer to the Stone," she all but shouts into the comm, ducking behind the rubble and then circling around his mecha to slap down a shield booster once there's a break in fire. She has no idea where Dingo is at this point, but with her shields a mess, she isn't doing much against him anyways. "I have an idea. It's not a good one."

"Affirmative," comes the robotic voice from his mecha. 

There are sparks trailing from the wounded limb of Sovereign, and when Jaeden jerks back, it comes free in the hooked maw of a Bullshark omnic. The shield arm is still intact and she's still fighting like Junkertown depends on it. It does. Tas is tangled with a Spider.

Which means...

She breathes in and out once, kicks on Aro's radio to some West African metal that Akande had played for her once when they sparred in Rialto. Tries to amp herself up for what is arguably the worst idea that she has ever had in her entire life. Nodding toward Hammond, she intones, "Let's do this."

She hears the sharp sound of pulsefire ringing in her ears as Hammond keeps his word, covering her the best he can. Then she slams on the cloak again, bolting down the straightaway toward the massive omnic by the wall. Hammond rolls over another wave of Irukandji, their bodies scattering up into the air in an almost comical fashion.

Three. Two. One...the sound dampener is back on, and she narrowly skirts a blast of fire from a Bastion unit on the wall when it opens up on Sovereign below. A series of Junker grenades go off where she had just been standing, and she knows Dingo is still on the field, but it doesn't matter. Once she hits full speed, she runs sidelong up the wall in a crescent and careens in a skid that causes metal to spark beneath the Jackrabbit's feet and carries her the rest of the way up onto the outer fortifications. 

God, it's close.

They only have one chance at this. 

She reroutes all available power to the thrusters and drops the cloak. Four systems go critical at once. She reroutes, patches while she awaits a signal. Two systems critical. It'll hold long enough - she hopes. God, she hopes so, watching the Stonefish about to fire. A direct impact in the right place might knock it back through the wall.

Jack Vargas exhales in a slow, fluid breath. Counts to ten. Counts to ten again. _We're looking at the same stars. Bye, babe._ The warmth that's building in her eyes threatens to spill over, and she fights it back. She needs to see. She needs to do this. Wipes her face on her shoulder.

She takes off running again, her heart hammering in her chest. The thrusters kick on and suddenly it's faster, so fast that she can feel the heat start to build up as the gears start to go. 

One chance at this. 

When the Jackrabbit hits, it's directly into the shoulder of the Stonefish where the Irukandji are wiring, and one of those bristling spines that jut from it pierces clean through the chassis of the mecha, not six inches from her. Three systems critical. Four. Five. Heat starts to build in the outer workings of the Jackrabbit at a flashfire speed, and there's almost no warning as it catches fire, immolating from the inside out.

She doesn't so much catch herself on the back of the omnic when she's jettisoned out, as she does slam hard into the chassis between the shoulder and neck of it with a dull, hard snap as something breaks. Her hair and the back of her shirt still smoking, she sucks in a breath of dry Outback air as the Stonefish lists to the side and quite nearly topples back through the wall. Not all the way. _Fuck._

Ribs? Maybe her arm is broken, she thinks. When she tries to push up, everything nearly fades to black. She is dimly aware that the Jackrabbit has gone critical, curling in on herself as it erupts in a hail of fire and metal that skitters off the outer armor of the Stonefish like nothing. 

The radio is crackling like wild, erratic from the distance and the charge of electricity pulsing through the air as the laser continues to charge. 

"Jackr...t is down...we los...Jack..."

Not lost. Just watching the massive, scarlet optic of the Stonefish flick toward her with a dim recognition that something has landed on its chassis like a parasite. It's easily eight times the size of her mecha. Fucking enormous.

No time.

No fucking time at all. But she caught it's attention, and Hammond and Tas are covering Jaeden while Sovereign kicks into repair cycle just long enough to keep power. When it turns, slowly, back towards the Junkers in the square, she can see the Irukandji running with more cables. Back-up port. Which means they're fresh out of time yet again. No other choices. Fine. Fuck it.

She clings to one of the plates the best she can, swinging around the back and almost passing out when everything darkens around the edges, a pinpoint of grey at the centre remaining. Her boot slams into an access hatch, a necessity for maintenance on omnics this large. Once. Twice. Three times, as hard as she can, before she's able to pry it open, the rough metal cutting into her fingers with a shudder from the omnic.

This is more David and Goliath than she had envisioned when she thought she was throwing herself to her death.

Maybe Jonah and the Whale.

She hates those fucking stories.

Scrambling through the access port, she lands hard on her shoulder inside the chest of the beast, listening to the rattle of pulse munitions from above and hearing a hard slam to the side of the omnic. Hammond must be trying to keep it busy now. She levers up to her feet slowly, gripping onto whatever she can find nearby to help stabilize her as she looks up at the fission core - a whirling coruscation of wild light that flickers and pulses erratically even now. 

All she has is the boot knife, so she starts cutting wires and cables, feeling the omnic list to the side as its nerves are severed from the inside out. She uses it like a machete, hacking through anything and everything she can find and ignoring how some of it burns or sparks or a wire here cuts further. Jack hacks through it all like desert scrub until she feels the omnic list hard to the side, all but slamming her into the side of the chassis as it hits the Junkertown fortifications. 

It's not the fastest work she's ever done, with one functional arm, but it seems to be working. All she can do is pray that the core doesn't go critical. That the omnic doesn't go through the wall now if it falls, because she isn't going to survive a drop to the base of the cliffs rattling around in this death can. 

"We have incoming support," Tas sounds on the comm, the message crackling some at the start, but evening out as the signal picks back up. "Some crazy fucks in a transport. We got two backing us up and the other three coming in _hot_ on the wall."

She cuts faster, feeling the grey start to border back in for a moment before she shakes it off. The geiger counter at her hip is ticking away, screaming at her all the while as the massive omnic tilts and shifts, then finally seems to fall. Not through the wall. Not through the wall. Please not through the wall, she prays, her breath shaking and teeth chattering as she bites out on her radio, "I'm inside the Stonefish."

"You're _fucking what now_?" Good. Jaeden's still alive. "Jesus, I thought you were in that fucking mecha still. Fuck, Jack."

Another wire severed, and she hears the core start to do what she hopes is powering down. The alternative is not good. The alternative is critical. There's an irregular thump above, one that picks back up in a way that makes her heart pound in her ears before it slows, skips, and then hums to a halt, the omnic's core shutting down to effectively halt it. 

"Someone get on that fucking Bastion unit," Jaeden barks out into the comm, the staccato crack of sniper fire heard thereafter. 

She feels the omnic list backwards slowly, and at the last moment, it simply sinks down onto the ground below like a marionette with cut strings, not bearing her off the fortifications and down to her death. 

The rattle of munitions fire can still be heard outside. 

Once she can untangle from the remainder of the wires and cables, Jack picks her way back toward the access point to lever through it. It's definitely her fucking arm that's broken, or more likely fractured, she realizes, when she tries to use it to pull up a rung on the ladder and almost drops back into the chassis like a stone. But she can manage to get out with one, pulling herself up onto the back of the Stonefish with a grunt of effort. 

Then, she slides down its outer chassis onto the rough rocks and dirt below. Her bones already ache from radiation exposure, which is never a good sign. She hasn't had radiation poisoning in fucking _ages_. Doesn't relish the thought of revisiting it.

"Hammond!" Jaeden's voice is wild in her ear, barks out fiercely as Sovereign saws through another Irukandji and sparks skitter off the mecha's chassis when the omnics on the ground return fire. The Bastion opens up again, and she can't even start to count how many rounds hit the Queen's mecha before its life is cut short by one of the snipers out on the wall. She can hear others starting to lay down cover fire as more Irukandji pour into the square. Now that the Stonefish is down, they're starting to swarm. 

"He recommends that you run," comes the familiar sound of Hammond's mecha, and now she's looking out over a sea of hovering, blood-red orbs between her and cover. Mines. _Fuck my life_. She tries once more to amp herself up for it, adrenaline all but spent, and finds that all that's left is ice in her veins. When the mines flicker blue, only for an instant, she breaks into a dead sprint, every footfall sending a sharp bolt of pain through her arm. 

Skidding to a halt behind Hammond, she throws her arms over her head as the mines go off under a wave of chittering omnics, only narrowly avoiding being rolled over as he shifts, and feeling a shower of fire, glass, and metal pepper over them both. 

Her vision is tinged in red, blood trickling from her brow as the crack of sniper fire sounds overhead, finding one of the other Bastion's on the wall. She can taste salt and copper in her mouth. She has never felt this alive. She has never been this terrified, an animal fear that takes its root in her bones as she kicks off the ground and bolts for better cover, sliding to a halt behind a crumbling section of wall. 

Around her, the shuddering of mechas moving and the sharp cracking of munitions fire. When she ducks behind a pillar and hears round after round resound off it, all she can think is that it _isn't going to end like this._ Not like this, listening to round after round boring into the heavy metal behind her like it's coring an apple. Without a mecha, this is knowing that unless something changes, one of those rounds has her name etched into its casing.

Dingo is rounding on Jaeden. Son of a fuck. 

Then there's just anger in her, white-hot and burning in her head and her heart. When he rounds with his scattergun, the shot goes wide, because Hammond has hooked a cable into the end of it with his cable and is pulling. She's not letting him put a bullet in Jae after all this. She's fucking not. When he starts to prep the other gun, Jack ducks out from behind the pillar to sprint at his mecha. It misfires, the orb-shaped mecha Hammond is in jerking hard to ensure it doesn't hit her. 

Jack isn't sure how her boots find the rungs on the back of it, or even how she manages to climb up, save out of sheer fucking desperation, nearly fumbling when white-hot pain lances up her arm with every movement. One of those metal limbs clips her brow, just barely, but then everything is black, a pinprick of grey in the middle as she clings to the ladder like it's salvation. It is. 

Her face is warm and wet, and everything goes _white_ and then _red_ and then _gold_ before her vision returns, a warmth spreading through her bones to knit superficial cuts, lend relief. 

She doesn't question it because there isn't time, clinging to the rungs with her legs, arms reaching into the vent and cheek pressed against dusty metal to grasp at the emergency release, pulling hard with cut and bruised fingers. The mecha ejects its pilot with a concussive sound, whirring to a standstill as Jack loses her grip and falls, landing hard on her back and feeling the air leave all at once, as if she's been punched in the lungs. 

Hammond ends Dingo. 

She watches the spherical mecha arc up on a cable and then disconnect, slamming down violently on the ejected pod to send a spray of blood, bone, and metal in every direction. It shakes the ground beneath her, and she tries not to think about how much of Dingo just hit her all at once, something warm and red flecked over her as she sucks in a breath and prays that she doesn't get fucking shot.

Several things happen all at once. 

There's a wisp of black smoke nearby, rising into a pillar of dark mist as an omnic across the way rattles off rounds at her, and when she braces for an impact that would tear through flesh and bone, she instead hears them glance off body armor as a tall form all but apparates on top of her, a grimace on Moira's pale features from the impact before the other whips around, taloned hands summoning an orb of dark violet energy that drifts across the open square to crackle as it tendrils of energy touch a cluster of Irukandji, leaving spiderweb cracks in their chassis and green-blue fluid erupting from burst ports when their systems fail.

"Rabbit. _Stay down_. I have you," a low and lilting voice commands, and it's like falling into deep water. She stays there, a gauntleted hand pressed to her sternum to keep her down. A golden glow is emanating from it, and everything hurts _less_ somehow. Mismatched eyes never meet hers, instead keen on the battle around them, but Moira intones, "Akande is coming. The Strike Team has pushed the remainder back from the Scrapyard in tandem with your forces. Ah. There we are."

She's seen vids before, but they _do not_ do Akande Ogundimu justice. Without knowing him, she would have ventured that Doomfist was a dramatic moniker. No. It's fitting. He's vocal, every blow accompanied by what she could only describe as a roar, a cry out. It's brute strength but it's also poetry, a Spider omnic rocketing into the wall so hard it embeds there, chest concave from where the concussion gauntlet has found it. 

She doesn't see what happens next, not with Moira's arm looped around her, pulling her behind better cover as rounds skitter around them again. But slumped on a stone partition with the blood pounding in her ears, she hears the call out in his voice, rumbling like thunder _Meteor Strike_ before something hits in the center square so hard dust and chips of stone fly overhead like the aftermath of a localized nuclear blast. 

And then she doesn't hear any more Irukandji.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fluff, etc, incoming.
> 
> This Chapter's Music:  
> Bloody City - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39jY0QPyQps


	25. all my sins need holy water, feel it washing over me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ** Junkertown medical advice - just rub some dirt in it, you're fine  
> ** Fluff?? Serious conversations and fluff???  
> ** I'm pretty sure Jack could have an entire conversation in various inflections of the word 'fuck' at this point  
> ** Smut is a thing that happened  
> ** I know you're all shocked  
> ** Nightmare Before Christmas Dingo loves Unethical Geneticist, News at 11.

"You'll hold up fine," Wolf assures her after as he checks an IV full of a weird, shimmeringly amber substance with a dubious expression. It's the fourth time she's told him nicely to fuck off and help someone else. She knows she'll be fine. The goddamn Oasis Minister of Genetics hooked everything up, and while she appreciates Wolf in a very Junker way, the part of her that was inside a fucking Stonefish hugging a nuclear core about six hours ago wants to leave the medicine to the actual fucking doctor. She'd also like to stop throwing up water every time she tries to drink some, but that doesn't look like it's happening any time soon.

Her shirt pulled over her head to leave her in coppery skin and tattoos, a bra and dirty, blood and omnic-fluid stained trousers, complimented by leather boots, she has the dirty cloth bunched up and pressed to the split in her brow that re-opened during a scuffle in the street, hearing the occasional 'drip' of blood onto the beer-stained timber underfoot as she leans forward. It reminds her of how close it was. How close they all were to never feeling anything again. It aches, like the dull burn in her bones from exposure to so much radiation outside the safety of her mecha, like the now-cooled metal buried beneath her skin.

Six hours ago she had been certain that they were all going to die. Six hours can change a lot. She isn't sure what's in the IV or what Moira did when she arrived, save that involved spraying her with...something, but her arm doesn't hurt as badly and some of the superficial wounds have faded, though not all. Jack isn't complaining. It could be so much worse than it is.

Wolf has prescribed her the famed Junkertown remedy of two radiation pills, half a bottle of Swagman's moonshine for the pain, and a set of tweezers so she can start pulling shrapnel out on her own, and by god, while being absolutely blackout drunk sounds like an _excellent_ idea right now, she knows it's a bad one. 

She doesn't know where Moira is right now, but occasionally, a terse direction or stern order in that familiar accent sounds above the din of the injured and infirm, and she knows that the taller woman isn't far, likely elbows deep in another medical crisis. Last she knew, Akande was out overseeing efforts to look for survivors and sweep up the remaining Irukan, and the remaining three members of the Talon strike team had simply disappeared in the direction of the omnium on their transport.

She can guess why, after what Moira said.

She hopes they give him fucking hell.

"Bunny," Jaeden's voice sounds nearby, a little more rough around the edges than usual, shortly before the Queen drops down onto the cot to sit beside her. Jae looks as tired as she feels, all bruises and scrapes on tanned skin, but the light in those hazel eyes hasn't dimmed a bit. There's the nod of firm-boned features in her direction, "Never knew anyone crazy or stupid enough to climb into a Stonefish. Sounds right Junker of you. And here I thought you were losing your edge."

"Might have to stop calling you that, now that the 'rabbit is toast," the Queen adds, taking the shirt from her and dipping it in moonshine for a minute before pressing it back to her brow, and _god fuck that hurts_. It elicits a strained sound from her, more than a few choice words.

Salt in the wound.

But she walked away with her life, and not everyone was that lucky. There's a firm pressure on the cut for a time before the cloth withdraws, and Jaeden's calloused fingertips adhere a butterfly bandage there as a stop-gap measure. Jae continues, "Maybe it's the rattling your brain just got."

Then, with a nod toward the bag next to the cot, "I brought your bag over in case you needed it. I'll need your help patching Sovereign after you've gotten some rest. Some of the boys are out looking for some scrap to do it."

Fuck it. 

Jack's countenance twists, and she picks up the bottle nearby by the neck, taking a large sip and feeling it burn all the way down. And then promptly burn all the way back up when her empty, radiation-sick stomach protests immediately and she coughs moonshines all over her boots. Spitting out a bit of blood and alcohol onto the timber, she wipes her mouth on the back of her arm, voice more than a little hoarse as she asks, "Christ. That tastes like fucking poison. Did he make this batch out of piss and kerosene?"

With a loud laugh at that, one that causes a few heads to turn toward the Queen, Jaeden intones with a wolfish smile, "Probably." Then, nodding toward the centre of the room, "Your new friends came in clutch. Fuckin' Doomfist, though? Half-tempted to ask him to scrap once everything's quieted down."

"Don't," Jack answers with a soft sound of amusement, spitting once more when she can't get the taste of moonshine out of her mouth. "He'll kick your ass and then make you train three times a week until you wish you're fucking dead." 

Her hand comes to rest on her side as she observes, "God, I think I'm going to throw up again."

A booted foot slides a bucket closer to her.

That's a thing that happens. She didn't think that she had anything left in her stomach to come up at this point. Turns out bile is even worse to vomit up than Swagman's moonshine. She uses the latter to rinse out her mouth, then spits in the bucket. Lesser evil.

With a snort of amusement, cocky but warmer than it was before, Jaeden asks, "What's your fancy Oasis girl going to say when she sees the ass-kicking you just took?"

Swishing another mouthful of moonshine and feeling it burn on a cut inside her cheek, she spits it out into the bucket, starting to answer, "Probably th-"

"I see we are intent on poisoning ourselves after an already narrow brush with death," a dry, pointedly clinical voice sounds behind them, and she feels the hand that settles on her shoulder, its thumb tracing a light circle on the back of her neck. Moira's voice still carries it's familiar lilt, reminds her of green ocean waves crashing on distant stone. "I can administer a light sedative until the desire to tempt fate expires, if you like."

It isn't the time and it certainly isn't the place, not in the middle of Wolf's bar at a makeshift clinic, surrounded by Junkers in various state of injury. But there's a small part of her at that, that just wants the other to wrap that hand the rest of the way around. Not to hurt. Not for sex. Just to hold. To let her relinquish control so she can stop feeling like both she and the world are still spiraling out of it. _Not the place_ , she recognizes, looking up toward pale, angular features and finding herself fixed upon the dusting of freckles upon them, then heterochromatic eyes, one dark as wine, the other blue as the sea, both perilous in their own right.

She knows. She knows Moira knows as soon as she looks at her, because the other's thumb brushes over the back of her neck once more and then presses there a little more firmly in reassurance before the touch relinquishes. It's written in the faint acknowledgement in those mismatched eyes, the hint of a smirk at the corner of the other's lips.

"The moonshine, Jacqueline," there's a dark note to that lilting voice now, like a current of water that's tempting to sink into. She does, lets it buoy her up as she holds up the bottle for the other to take and hears a faint, pleased sound when it's relinquished.

The creak of metal and leather is what reminds her that Jaeden is still there, still sitting beside her with hazel eyes taking in the situation and this strange new presence in Junkertown with a keen curiosity, the sort that always analyzes for what is strong and what may be weak.

Warm fingertips catch her beneath the chin as Moira steps around, tilting her head up for a moment as the other holds her gaze. The leaden yoke of a month of imprisonment, separation, the uneasy tension of interference by Overwatch, Talon, the omnic incursion, seems to melt away and she exhales in a slow, fluid breath. 

"Grand," is all Moira drawls out at first, the devil's voice returned to her ears, low and liltingly familiar. Oddly lulling, as exhausted as she is. "Refrain from further _antics_ if you would. And _rest_. I will return for you once the relief medics have arrived."

She doesn't say anything, bone-tired as she is.

Can't, because those angular features bend down, down, down nearer hers, until she can see the freckles that scatter over the other's countenance like constellations. There's a soft kiss, feather-light, to the scar that touches her upper lip, and it makes her dark lashes flutter for a moment, leaves a faint, tingling feeling in its wake. 

And then, the taller woman straightens imperiously, takes the time to tuck a strand of dark hair behind her ear, fingertips ghosting along her cheek before Moira inclines her head slightly, then withdraws to sweep back into the rows of cots.

"Jesus," is all Jaeden musters beside her in a rough cadence, firm-boned features vaguely incredulous as the other follows with, "Her? That's your...You let her call you _Jacqueline_?" 

"God. She can call me whatever she wants to," Jack all but breathes as she watches the other's tall silhouette slip over toward another cot, lean down to clinically inspect a wound and then offer what must be cool, concise instructions to Wolf as to how to treat it. She realizes after a moment that her fingertips are light where they touch the side of her throat, and forces them down, mind settling some.

There's another snort of Jaeden, whose hazel eyes linger on the geneticist for a moment as if measuring her up. A roll of her shoulders later, the Junker Queen rises to her feet and flashes a brash smile, one that seems a little forced around the edges, and observes, "Get some sleep, bunny."

There's a cold, wet nose pushing her hand then, and when she glances down, Barrel is looking up at her with warm, whiskey-brown eyes, his tail wagging excitedly when she looks down. With a fond little laugh, her smile warm at the sight of him, Jack intones, "Hey, mate. You going to come up?"

Sprawling back onto the cot as comfortably as she can manage and pulling her jacket over her for warmth, Jack shifts to make room for the dingo pup beside her, one arm wrapping around him once he's clambered up. His tail thumps on the side of the cot, sending faint reverberations along it every time she stop stroking his ears. He carries with him the faint smell of animal, dry earth, and smoke from the streets outside. 

A boot bumps one leg of the cot at that, eliciting a grumble from the dingo beside her, and she can't help but laugh. 

"Catch you later," Jaeden remarks with a vague amusement, nodding at her before heading toward the door, presumably back toward the Scrapyard for now.

It doesn't take long for her eyes to fall half-lid. It's loud in the bar, a constant murmur of voices, the discomforted cries and groans of the wounded as the medics tend to them. But she doesn't need much incentive to drift off. The adrenaline wore off a long time ago, and exhaustion has crept in in its place, rooted in her aching bones. 

"Goodnight, boy," Jack whispers near the dingo's ear, watching it twitch slightly with the sound, and then buries her face in the thick ruff of fur at his neck and closes her eyes entirely.

\--- 

Jacqueline Vargas sleeps for twelve and a half hours. She sleeps like the dead, unable to be roused or summoned even when the needle is removed from its place in the crook of her elbow. Even when long arms slip around her, one beneath her shoulders and the other under her knees, and a tall, lean form carries her from the cot and up the stairs. 

The rooms upstairs in Wolf's bar aren't rented often. He keeps them up and tidy, comfortable at least by Junkertown standards, to see use from the occasional visitor who does not have a place to stay with friends or family, a rarity in itself. The plain wooden floors and brick-worked walls are clean enough, and while the room is entirely open save for a panel that separates the bathroom from the living area, it manages to come off as cozier than it does claustrophobic.

When she does come around, it is languidly warm, shoulder-deep in soapy water in a wholly unorthodox bath, likely what used to be a watering trough for brumbies, although repurposed to serve as a makeshift tub in the rented room. The sharp-sweet scent of citrus soap fills the air, a touch of bergamot and burnt amber from the vicinity of the tall form seated on a stool behind her, outside the bath. It takes her a moment to parse where she is and who she's with, even with long, slender hands meticulously scrubbing the ends of her hair to free a last bit of detritus and grime.

She emits a low sound when it's rinsed free, a tin cup dipped into the hot water to accommodate the action. It feels obscenely good, soothing some of the dull ache that persists in her bones.

Inhaling slowly and then exhaling in a fluid breath, her dark eyes half-lid, Jack murmurs in a voice that sounds drowsy even to her ears, "Maybe I should hug a fission core more often."

There's a low, thoughtful hum behind her at that, slim, precise fingers drawing through her damp hair to gather it.

"Perhaps not." And god, that voice is everything that she has wanted to hear in a month, low and silken, darkly smooth, like the surface of a deep lake or a black mirror. She wants to hear it say anything, and soon it obliges her in that distinct accent, "While I am not adverse to putting you back together, rabbit..."

Her eyes slip back closed as a comb starts to pull through her hair, pausing here and there to tend a stubborn knot or tangle as she listens to that voice, "I would prefer it only happen after _I_ have taken you apart."

She can't help but make an amused sound at that, dark eyes slipping open a measure. Steam is wicking off the surface of the water and she can see the suds that turn its surface subtly milky, clusters of bubbles here and there. The bar of soap in the tray is familiar, charcoal grey and smelling of citrus. Moira must have gone to get her bag.

"You can do whatever you want," she answers back in a languid cadence, her eyelids feeling heavy with the words. 

Another low hum behind her, this one amused, before that mirror-dark voice replies with altogether more confidence than she thinks it fair anyone should have, a compelling amount, "I know."

Long, slender fingers wring the water from her hair then, slipping dark tresses between them before sweeping them over one of her shoulders. She feels cool, soft lips brush the nape of her neck, and it makes her shiver involuntarily, turn to catch them with her own. And that's good, too. Another thing it feels like she's waited far too long for.

Moira obliges her, shifts forward into it subtly in a way that tells her she wasn't the only one. No. Not by far, if the breathy sound she hears is any indication. What passes between them is warm and welcoming, soft in a way that makes her want to hold onto it well after it's over, though neither of them draws back far. 

Perched on a stool and leaned over the back of the basin to draw her near enough for that kiss, Moira O'Deorain is impeccable even like this. Especially like this. Especially in the soft, golden glow of lantern-light because the power must have flickered out again, a dim illumination that washes amber over that lean frame and makes a corona of copper and gold at the edges of the other's flame-coloured hair. Clad in nothing but a soft, heather gray shirt and a pair of darker boxer briefs, there's a lithe easiness to that lean frame that she doesn't often see despite the weariness that lingers around the edges.

"Hello, rabbit," Moira murmurs then, that voice low and welcoming. She could drown in it. She absolutely could. 

Instead, she watches coppery lashes flutter once when she brushes warm, damp fingertips along the line of the other's sharp jaw, watches as ocean-and-blood eyes open once more behind them, meet hers. 

"God," is all she whispers, tasting copper and red earth and the sweet but sharp bite of citrus on the air, drinking in the way those mismatched eyes are looking at her. Her voice conveys it perhaps better than the words, "God, _I fucking missed you_."

One slender hand dips into the water, cupping some to bear it up and pour it slowly along the curve of her shoulder, fingertips trailing over coppery skin there. There's no posturing now. Just them. Just as they are. Just how they want to be. It's strange that it would be Junkertown that did them in, has all the walls down to their foundations and the armor stripped, left behind.

"Tell me how you feel."  
"I love you."

They speak at the same time, the words bearing a pleasant quality as they intertwine, overlap - the low lilt of a Dubliner accent and the smooth smoke of an Australian one. 

She can tell the other woman heard her and knows she means it. It's written in the way those mismatched eyes avert from hers for a moment, drifting toward the surface of the water as if its milky suds held some mystery or a secret to the universe, and an unanticipated tint of pale pink touches the arch of high cheekbones. The smile that curves over Moira's lips is pleased and more than a little fond, if ill-hidden. It is not the secret that the other clearly wishes it to be, not with the way those lean shoulders dip with a slow, fluid exhalation and mismatched eyes lift to hers once more with _that look_ in them.

"You shouldn't," comes a low promise, though Moira's voice is no less warm for it. The other's hand slips up to rest along the column of her neck, warm there as its thumb trails the line of her jaw in a slow, measured fashion. "All of this, rabbit..."

And Jack knows what she means. Everything. Everything that has transpired over the course of days and weeks, from the stranger in her apartment to the warehouse in the desert to the Stonefish that breached Junkertown's walls. Moira means everything, and professes with a low, lilting, silk-smooth certainty, "I would lead you to ruin, if you let me. You would hurt and I would be no balm for it. You would struggle in the snare until you learned to hate me."

Her dark eyes are lost in a field of wine-scarlet and sea-blue, and they read the conviction there, as if all that was said were inevitable, a dire portent dredged from amidst other auguries and visions of the future they might share. It isn't. How could it be, with the way that Moira looks at her? With the warm feeling in her fingertips that has nothing to do with the water and everything to do with this woman. Less than twenty-four hours ago, her future had almost been erased. If it hadn't, she would still know what she wanted in this.

What she hears are a hundred ways that this could all have gone wrong, could still go wrong, but she hears in the back of her mind the one way in which it went right. It sounds like the wind that whispers through the Junkertown streets, and the sudden rumble of thunder that echoes overhead, sending reverberations through the tin rooftops. It sounds like the rain that just came howling home on the red cliffs.

Jack leans up slowly, gooseflesh breaking out on her coppery shoulders from the difference in temperature and her touch light, fingertips warm where they catch the other's chin. She kisses her softly, warmly, whispering to the curve of Moira's lips as the rain rattles off the rooftop overhead, "Don't make me your self-fulfilling prophecy."

"I want to be so much more than that," is what she confides thereafter, and all she can see is scarlet and blue, coppery lashes, a hint of freckles the bridge of the other's nose brushes lightly to hers.

"Oasis will have challenges," Moira's voice is low, its accent reminding her of a green salt sea rolling with waves near a greener isle, the froth scattering amidst the rocks. "Remedying the state of my Ministry. Righting matters with the Council. My time will be-"

She interrupts softly, her fingertips sliding into the other's hair to let it slip between them like so much fire and gold, "Fuck Oasis. Fuck all the rest of it." 

She traces the curve of Moira's ear with one warm fingertip, asking of her, "What do you _want_?"

It cracks the last bit of armor free, like a bronze-washed cuirass being removed and set gently on the floor, sharp features softening about the edges in some ways or at the very least, uninhibited. There's a slow inhalation then, one that lifts lean shoulders slightly, and she can see them dip with the fluid exhalation that follows.

"Isn't that a question, rabbit," is what falls matter-of-fact from the devil's mouth, smooth as glass and dark as a distant sea. It's earnest, wanting, everything and anything in between. And still, mismatched eyes hold to hers, their scarlet and blue heady behind coppery lashes as the taller woman tilts forward only slightly, sharing the secret in a scarce whisper just shy of her lips, "Permission to be selfish."

She grants it in bounds, tasting coffee and smoke on Moira's own, her knuckles catching in the front of a heather gray shirt as she pulls forward and that lanky frame follows her in, clothes and all. Thank fucking god for Junker ingenuity. That the bath is deep. When her breath hitches, it allows Moira to push forward into her mouth with a low sound, and she feels a hand tangle in her hair not an instant later, swiftly used for leverage. It's intent. It's hard and hot and it tilts their evening swiftly, straight towards hell.

Part of her wonders if this is what it would have felt like if the Stonefish had gone off, vaporized them all in one violent flashbang at the top of the red cliffs. 

If it would taste like coffee and copper and Moira O'Deorain when it went.

Moira O'Deorain, who is the only conceivable person in the world who could see her, jacket still smoking at the shoulders, covered in blood, both hers and otherwise, in a Junkertown warzone amidst the rubble and not treat her like she's made of glass, too fragile to touch, less than forty-eight hours later. Thank god. It feels like she's air and the other is drowning, or smoke and the other is burning. Or maybe they both are. What a fucking way to go.

A wet, heather gray t-shirt isn't much of a barrier between them, but she wants it off, and her hands slide under it to pull it over those lean shoulders, a brief lapse in the contact between them as she succeeds and that fiery hair mussed in its wake. Gooseflesh is breaking out over the other's skin already from the play of warm water and cooler air, and when they've broken apart for a moment, all that she can do as she looks into those wine and salt-sea eyes is smile, a slip of a thing that crests on her coppery features like the sun on the horizon to grow brighter the longer it lasts. 

Warmth imbues it and the quiet laughter that follows it, strikes the smirk from the taller woman's freckled countenance to summon a fond, secretive smile there in its stead, a husky chuckle chasing after that shift in expression. When Moira draws in, she can feel that smile for a moment, though swiftly can think of little else but the curve of cool, soft lips warming steadily with every touch to hers.

A cool hand finds its way into her hair once more, and the warmer one curves at her hip to draw her where the taller woman wants her, namely in her lap, legs wrapped around slim hips. She can more than live with that, slides her hands up along a lean back to feel every shift and contour of it.

At least until that warm hand slides up to palm her breast, and then her breath hitches the first time, fingertips curling against pale, freckled skin. A second time when the other's head dips to find a pulse point beneath her jaw, where she's certain there will be a faint, purple-red mark tomorrow. And perhaps they would have remained as such for a while, it's just that the second exhalation comes out as a breathy, "God fuck, please."

It's not that first word nor the second, but that third one that does things for Moira. That catches her attention like movement in a golden field would a hawk circling far above on warm currents. The talons are the same, but the eyes are different, flick back up to hers to reveal their receding rim of colour. Another kiss, warm but harder than before, and that low voice coaxes her in the almost-dark, "Ask me again, rabbit."

That hand is indecent in the best possible way, and what little willpower she may have had when it comes to this woman, that is to say none, is long eroded after too many days and miles apart. Dark lashes flutter for a moment at what isn't so much a question as it is a direction, and she licks her lips as if to wet them and then asks in as smooth a cadence as she can manage, one that's coming unraveled around the edges already, "Please?"

There's no relinquishing of the taloned hand in her hair, no. Only the slow shift of the warmer one, slowly, fingertips that play over her coppery skin to tease their way down her side and then trail languidly down the slope of her hip. When they slide home, the low, pleased sound that the taller woman makes is much quieter than the one that she makes against the sharp angle of a freckled cheekbone.

"Lig dom cabhrú leat," Moira's voice is low, warm as velvet or perhaps good whiskey, and the subtleties of that accent playing out huskily in her ear are not helping in the slightest. Not with the way that first one, then a second, and then a third of those long fingers slide slowly inside her, her own fingertips curled tightly to the other's back. When the former shift, her dark lashes flutter again, and she's all but riding that hand in Moira's lap, a hand still tangled in her hair to keep her features close to the other's.  
** Let me help you

"Fuck," is all she breathes against the curve of Moira's lips, the word itself hitching when a thumb glides in a slow circle in tandem with a slow roll of her hips forward. In the dim, amber light, she can still pick out the faint tint of rose that's becoming prominent beneath the freckles at the taller woman's cheekbones, that starts to drift toward the column of a slender neck to touch the other's chest as Moira moves with her. 

"Tá mo chroí istigh ionat," comes in a husky whisper in the shell of her ear. Jack has no idea what it means, but the sweet-smoke sound of that voice almost does her in then and there. Already. She knows it's something that Moira is intimately aware of, entwined as they are, and even as she bites her lip to stem another sound, that voice is even huskier in her ear, "Stay with me, rabbit."  
** I love you/literal: My heart is within you

The lavender-tinted digits in her hair tighten subtly, use their leverage to pull her head back from where she's turned into the other's cheek and then forward once more, where she's wanted. Until her nose brushes to a freckled one and all she can see is Moira's eyes, heady and dark, perfectly mismatched in the dim illumination afforded by the amber lantern overhead. Her breath shudders, and the other's is barely more even when the taller woman repeats lowly, "Stay with me."

And like that, the rhythm between the changes, slows down until it becomes a languid thing between them, the roll and pitch of hips, the way a strong, slender hand moves, it's them. Imperfect and too much, gentle and rough and everything in between. Perfect in its own right. Unconventional. There's nowhere she doesn't feel it.

It laps like the green waves on a distant, stony shore and it whispers like the rain, wicking steam from the red dust of Junkertown's streets. When it all tilts steadily toward an inevitable end drawn out, all shaky breaths and soft gasps and stuttering movements that last too long, just shy of what's needed, it's like coming home.

There's not a coherent word that isn't the other's name, whispered like a prayer, pleaded softly in between breaths as she watches wine and ocean-dark eyes blown-black with it. It's the last thing to fall from her lips when it all comes undone, drags her down hard and fast to leave her breathless, fingertips trembling where they curl against a lean, freckled back. 

Gentleness has not been bled from them, found in the feather-light kiss to the scar at her upper lip as Moira coaxes her down, a hand drawn slowly from her, settled at her hip for a moment before that arm slides around her to merely keep her near. It's found in the cheek that nestles to hers, a warm kiss to the corner of her jaw before Moira murmurs into her ear, voice yet husky in a way that makes her shiver, "Cha robh dithis riamh a’ fadadh teine nach do las eatarra."

"Tell me what it means," her voice rises to answer, still frayed around the edges, it's smoothness worn down as her eyes fall half-lid. She tastes copper and a hint of mint, red dust and whiskey, a hint of salt when she brushes a kiss to the side of the other's neck in turn. 

The husky voice in her ear, all whiskey and smoke, produces a pleasant ache in her chest and a warmth in her fingertips, "Two never kindled a fire, but it lit between them."

"Mm," is all Jack manages in response, though she brushes another warm kiss where she is, feeling a slow exhalation from the other at that, the pleased sound that chases after it. She does it again, slowly mapping the column of the other's neck, keeping her touch languid and warm as the taller woman relaxes beneath it, shifts back to lean freckled shoulders to the side of the makeshift bath and allow her better access. 

If she were betting, and she has before. Down in the dirt in the Junkertown streets while she and the 'guard threw dice and tossed around credit chips. If she were betting, she would do so based on tells. On the obvious signs. She would base it on the blown-black pupils, the sliver of vivid colour around them as they watch her behind coppery lashes. On the way the other's hand lifts to trace a knuckle along the line of her jaw. 

The devil is in the details, and that's where she'll always find Moira. All expression, reaction, imperious features sculpted beneath amber light.

She'll find her in the hints of rose that brush beneath the freckles at sharp cheekbones, that travel further down, past the darker red she's left along the side of the other's neck in more than one place, before the remainder of that lanky frame disappears beneath the still-warm water. If Jack were betting, she'd be betting that Moira is almost already there. That all she needs is a gentle push in the right direction after what's been done. And while she'd prefer in spades to put her mouth where her money is, so to speak, there's always time for that later. 

So she settles for another kiss beneath the taller woman's jaw, a nip there afterwards, gentler than it would usually be. And even there, Jack finds that the other carries the faint scent of burnt amber and bergamot, mingling with the prevalent fragrance of citrus from the soapy water they linger in. 

Sudsy and tinged a milky hue from it, the bath isn't quite hot any longer, but still pleasantly warm, and the tremor in her fingertips diminishes when she dips a hand beneath the surface to find the plane of Moira's hip and follow it down. When they brush lower, they find a place that makes that head tilt back against and a low groan sound, and it never ceases to amaze her, even with that, at how much _quieter_ Moira is than she's ever managed.

Control is the one cardinal thing that Moira is never without, holds like a scalpel in long, skilled physician's fingers. The ones that could cut her apart with a surgical blade as thoroughly as they just took her apart otherwise. The boundaries of it blur here, become hazy with her lips on the column of a pale throat and whatever that woman is saying in her ear now, a low sound here, the husky murmur of Gaeilge there, never loud and always incomprehensible, but the best thing she's heard anyways.

Moira could tell her anything in that voice and Jack would eat out of the palm of her hand. 

Her own hands are subtly calloused, a lifetime of machine-work written in them, bearing small scars from an arc welder here, from a scrap in the dusty red streets there, from pulling back the slide on an antique rifle in the scrubland until she learned to shoot cans from atop the red rocks. But what they're doing now comes more naturally than any of those things ever have, found in the tilt of a slim wrist, the slow draw of slender fingers through and back.

She can take things apart, too. Reduce them to their barest parts, and whatever epithet just escaped the taller woman in a native tongue she doesn't understand tells her that it's a near thing. Written in the way the other's hand tangles back into her hair for something to hold onto, to draw them back face to face, in the barely-there flutter of coppery lashes when mismatched eyes become half-lid, slivers of colour against a pale, angular countenance. 

There's a hitch in that breath and she chases it this time. Moira's lips are cool and soft, and she tastes like coffee and copper, not the usual whiskey and mint that permeates her so often, indescribably. That breath is a warm gust against coppery skin, the hand in her hair and the other at her hip tightening suddenly as the Junker crooks her fingers just so. And when Jack tips forward to deepen that kiss, caresses a line of sharp teeth with her tongue, there's a husky moan into her mouth that's indescribable, really, prickles gooseflesh down her spine as it all comes to a conclusion. 

Her dark eyes glitter in the limited light, the corner of her mouth curling into a mischievous smile once the other has had a moment to compose herself, at which she confides smoothly, "Told you that I missed you."

Moira does little else but stare at her for several seconds at that, before a husky laugh escapes her, a fire-crowned head coming to rest back against the rim of the basin. Vividly mismatched eyes shift over her briefly, and she can see the beads of water trapped in coppery lashes when they catch the light, shifts to drape herself comfortably over that lithe frame, a kiss placed to the other's sternum before her chin comes to rest there. 

Everywhere they touch is warm, and she can hear Moira's breath start to even in slow increments, traces the path of a drop of water here or there when they slide over the taller woman's ivory skin to slip back into the bath proper. Mismatched eyes settled to hers, the other emits a low sound of mirth once more, shaking her head slightly before that gaze drifts up. 

As long fingers start to stroke through her hair, another low noise sounds from the taller woman's chest. With a husky lilt to her timbre still, Moira confides, "After all that work, I have made a mess of your hair, rabbit. The state of you."

It's Jack's turn to laugh at that, a warm, pleasant sound that echoes off the rim of the metal basin before she retorts, "If you gave a damn about the state of me, you wouldn't let me go out in public looking like I just got mouth-banged by Dracula half the time."

Another low, pleasant sound emanates from Moira at that, the cool brush of a knuckle felt at the side of her neck to trail steadily toward the shoulder, "That sounds very much like a _you_ problem, Jacqueline. I would be remiss not to take pride in my own work, would I not?"

She's about to reply something to the effect of that the taller woman is insufferably smug, but a warm hand finds her jaw and the thumb strokes over her cheek, a low voice accompanying it, "There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights."

_Flashbang over Junkertown._

Her dark eyes fall half-lid with contentment, a warm smile upon her countenance that doesn't fade. After a time, Moira leans forward to place a kiss atop her head, and those fingertips return to sliding through her damp hair. The question the other poses is simply, "Tell me how you feel?"

"Good," comes her response, though she knows what's really being asked, and soon obliges, "My bones ache a bit. But it's nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be after...all that the other day."

"That would be the cellular degradation. Radiation poisoning," the words roll like waves in that low timbre, Moira's countenance touched with no small displeasure at the memory of it. Matter-of-factly, as if it were absolute, and it likely is, the taller woman adds, "It would have been, had I not had my field equipment."

A clinical shift overcomes Moira's timbre then, "You will require further monitoring to ensure there are no unforeseen complications. The likelihood that future treatments are required is high, given your proximity to the core."

"Lesson learned," Jack muses in response, trailing warm fingertips along the other's skin in an idle pattern and deeply wishing that there was more hot water to warm them when it starts to border on lukewarm, sending a little shiver through her. 

"And what lesson would that be, rabbit?" comes the query, a dry note overtaking Moira's cadence thereafter. "I would have assumed _avoid excessive radiation_ to be apparent."

With a little sound of amusement at the other's demeanor, Jack replies in a drawl, "Oh, you're close. But no." She clicks her tongue to the roof of her mouth at that, offering instead, "Always fuck a genius on the first date."

There's a snort of amusement at that, Moira's timbre still dry as scarlet and blue eyes settled pointedly to hers. The geneticist merely directs, "I'm done with you. Get out of the water."

"That's what it took?" she counters with a mischievous smile, flicking a look over freckled features and leaning forward to steal a quick kiss before she complies, though not without a final, amused comment before she steps over the edge of the basin to find the timber floor, "I was getting cold anyways."

Her bones do ache, though it's a dim thing, dull and distant. It can be ignored. With little mind to the trail of water she's leaving on the timber, which was already water- and beer-stained well before they took up residence in the above-bar rooms, Jack pads over toward the shelves to pull down a towel and wrap it comfortably around herself, another caught for Moira. Though to be fair, she doesn't so much carry it over to the taller woman as she does watch the other climb out of the makeshift bath, a lanky, pale silhouette clad in soaking wet boxer briefs. The shirt is probably still in there somewhere.

When Moira stretches slowly, vertebrae popping with a hollow sound, and mismatched eyes flick over to see her standing there, head atilt and openly appraising the other, the taller woman strides over to take the towel herself. Long fingers catch her chin, a firm kiss pressed to her lips before that lilting voice confides, "You're a chancer."

Then, with a hand settled low on her back and a nod across the room, Moira remarks, "There are some things set out on the table for you. Go get ready for bed, rabbit. I will join you there shortly." 

At the quizzical look she offers the other in turn, Moira elaborates quite simply, "Your little beast is downstairs. I intend to fetch him, provided he is yet there." Drying off in a hasty fashion and exchanging her meager, wet garments for a set of slacks and a simple black shirt, the taller woman confides, "I was uncertain you would be able to sleep soundly without the sound of dingoes screaming."

"You're such a shit," Jack retorts amusedly, brushing her fingertips along the soft fabric of that dark shirt when the taller woman withdraws this time, and watching a smirk curl the corner of those infuriating features as Moira slips out the door to shut it with a soft 'click' behind her. 

She heads toward the table, hearing footsteps down the hall as she does. There's a soft, heather gray t-shirt and black boxer briefs folded atop the table, set carefully next to a tin cup, a toothbrush and a small, travel-sized tube of toothpaste, a few bottles of water, and a package of biscuits.

Bless this woman.

She pulls on the shirt, which seems somehow softer than anything she's worn since she arrived in Junkertown and still smells pleasantly of fabric softener, then the boxer briefs, rolling up the cuff of each leg to make them fit at least slightly better, then drops into a chair. Using her teeth to tear the corner off the package of biscuits, she eats three in rapid succession, her empty stomach thankful to have something in it.

Above the crinkling cellophane as she pulls out another biscuit and bites the edge off, she can hear the distant sound of pulsefire. Down off the cliffs, she imagines. Possibly near the solar farms. Once she's finished that last one, brushed the crumbs from her fingers, she twists the cap off a bottle of water and takes a small sip. Determining that she's in little danger of throwing up, as she had been last she was awake for any significant amount of time, she finishes the bottle without a breath, and then half of a second one.

Her head tilts when it seems to be taking time for the other to return, and she takes the other half bottle and the tin cup to set about brushing her teeth in a cracked mirror, spitting into the trash once she's rinsed her mouth, because the alternative is a small washbin, and that doesn't seem right. Making her way over toward the window to slide back the wooden slats over it slightly, she casts a look down on the street.

The sun is only just starting to set, a low glimmer of red-orange on a horizon still streaked with ominous clouds, and in the street below, she can see other Junkers moving to and fro in the red dust turned red mud from the flash of rain, on their way back home for the evening or to the wall to stand guard, some carrying the various tools and sundries needed for repairs. But it looks safe. Safer than it did before. As safe as Junkertown really gets after this close to the apocalypse. No omnics in the streets that she can see, but the signs that they've been there are everywhere.

It's force of habit, really, that moves her now. She pulls the wooden slats back over the window and bolts the sheet metal meant to stop stray bullets over it, double-checking to make sure it's secure before padding over toward the bed. The quilt atop it is pulled back and shaken out, then the sheets and pillow cases, ensuring that no spiders or other small Outback intruders have made their way past what she presumes was a cursory tidying of the room before it had occupants. 

Another check under the bed for anything that shouldn't be there, then to the top of the headboard, where she does find a knife taped, yet housed in a small sheath, presumably in the case of emergency. She steps over toward her boots to find her own, tucks it into the bedside dresser just in case, and then kicks back onto the mattress with a long, pleased sigh. It feels infinitely better than the cot downstairs. 

Glancing toward the door when it slips back open, she watches as Moira steps back into the room, one arm curved around the pup and the other securely at the scruff of his neck. Her tall, lanky frame bends to set the dubious dingo onto the floor, and Barrel, to his credit, stands there stiff-legged for a moment after the door has closed, peering up at the interloper who caught him with hackles up and ears tilted not-so-subtly back. 

Mismatched eyes lock with hers across the room for an instant before Moira cuts toward the basin to scrub her hands, a pointed look offered Jack as she dries them. She feels a pang of guilt that the other is partially dressed once more, unbelted trousers low enough on slim hips to reveal a pale glimpse of skin, and black t-shirt bearing more than a small share of red-tan dog hair from carrying the dingo up.

"You neglected to mention that he bites, Jacqueline," Moira voices with displeasure, ensuring that the door is bolted shut across its multiple secure-points before looking down at the shirt she wears in displeasure, not bothering to try to swipe the hair from it. With a purposeful intent, the taller woman sets about filling a small bowl with water and another from a pouch of dog food from Jack's military pack, then steps toward her own duffel bag atop a nearby chair.

"He's never bitten anyone before," Jack observes, though starts to turn back the blankets and get up before the other holds up a hand for her to halt. "You alright?" Then, as if it may help, "He's vaccinated."

"He did not connect," the taller woman remarks, glancing down at the pup once more and arching a brow as he emits a soft whooshing sound, not quite a bark and not quite not, as she passes by the table. "Though it was an admirable attempt at it."

Quite simply pulling the shirt over her head, then slipping out of her slacks as well, Moira stretches slowly once more and deposits the mussed clothes near the remainder of her luggage. Clad only in a pair of dark boxer briefs once more, it's easy to see the lean musculature in the other's back for a moment as the taller woman turns to check the door once more. She can see the exact place at the plane of the other's shoulder where milky white flesh speckled in freckles melds into lavender, and every branching section of metal implant that keeps that limb functional. 

"Come to bed," is all Jack requests, her voice smooth and a little languid with it. 

Mismatched eyes flick toward her, their scarlet and blue catching the limited light, before the taller woman heads toward the lantern to blow it out, the flame extinguished. Then she complies, and it's painfully familiar and too many days distant, how that lanky frame settles against her, pulls her forward until her breath is a slow exhale against the crook of the other's neck and shoulder and Moira's stirs her hair. God did she miss this.

If the low, pleased sound she hears from the other is any indication, so did she.

"He will need a proper name," sounds in a lower, yet still lilting timbre as Moira drapes the arm underneath her up and around her shoulder. She finds it, lacing their fingertips lightly together. "And obedience training, if you truly intend to take him to Oasis with you. It could be problematic if he elected to bite someone there, being what he is."

"Your accent gets thicker when you're tired," Jack observes with a soft pleasure at the fact, tracing a fingertip along a pale knuckle as they speak. Then, with faint amusement, "And what's the matter with Barrel?"

There's a soft scoff, sincere if also vaguely amused, before Moira observes, "Besides a complete lack of even basic manners, rabbit?" She can hear a hint of conviction in the other's voice as it continues, "Barrel is not a name. Aodhán, Dáithí, Ruarc, Conrí. A proper name. If you would not name a person _Barrel_ , you should not name that little creature such."

Her eyes half-lid with amusement, Jack trails her fingertips lightly along the other's side, admitting candidly, "I used to know a Junker named Thumbtack. One of the Queensguard is literally just Watchdog. That's his actual name."

This is drifting toward sleep, a weariness settling in her bones and threading its way through the other's voice. She can hear the soft clicking of Barrel's nails on the floor as he skulks around the room in the dark.

A chaste kiss is placed to her temple, Moira responding with utter certainty, "I am not referring to him as Barrel. Barra, perhaps."

"That just sounds like you're saying Barrel really slowly," she murmurs by way of response. With a mischievous curl to the corner of her lips, she concedes, "You can call _Barrel_ whatever you want, babe."

There's a low sound of amusement in Moira's chest at that, another kiss to her brow before the other confides, "You have atrocious taste."

" _I_ have excellent taste," Jack murmurs back more than a little drowsily, arm draping comfortably around the taller woman's side as she burrows a little nearer. "Are you the one seeing a world-renowned geneticist? I think not."

A low chuckle sounds, and she can feel the taller woman's breath turning a little more languid as Moira confides in her hair, "No, rabbit. The insufferable Junker currently keeping me awake."

At that, Jack trails a gentle touch up the other's back, tracing the lean contours of it in a soothing motion to summon forth a low, contented noise from the taller woman. She whispers more quietly, "How's that?"

"Good," comes similarly hushed response. So she keeps doing it, taking her time in stroking lightly up the other's back and then back down, tracing the slope of a shoulder-blade here, the dip of a spine there until she hears Moira's breathing steady and knows that the other is drifting off. 

She waits until she's certain, then whispers softly, "Goodnight, babe."

Her eyes slip shut as well, the faint curl of a smile lingering at the corner of her mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More on Barrel next chapter, when he totally gets up to 0 mischief.
> 
> Thx to @Mel155 for evil ideas to come.


	26. there's blood on the floor, everybody's watching

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ** Soft morning gays  
> ** Sibling antics  
> ** Dingo antics  
> ** Breaking points  
> ** Fight Club: Part 2

There's something to be said for early mornings. Not always. Not bone-tired on the way back from the machine shop in Oasis, watching the sun come up and having never slept. Not falling into a full-sized bed in the flat she shares with her friends, turning in to the golden light drifting in through the windows and wishing the curtains were thicker.

But today? She's starting to think that under the right circumstances, she might start to like them. And it has more to do with the company than anything. 

Jack isn't certain when they shifted during the night, but she does know that if she could wake up like this every morning, it would be worth being up. Her slim form is half-curled around the tall, lanky scientist occupying her Junkertown bed, one arm draped around the other's lean shoulders and the other cradling Moira's head to her chest, cheek nestled against fiery, brilliantly red hair. When her eyes slip open, she can see how the ends of it glitter in what little sunlight ekes through the slats in the window and around its sheet metal covering, casting strands with hints of citrine, amber, and gold. 

This. She could fucking get used to this. 

It's warm. Comfortable. It's a morning that carries with it the scent of bergamot and burnt amber, smoke and red earth, a hint of blackpowder and a little citrus from the machine oil soap.

It's fucking perfect.

Dark eyes drift over the contours of freckled shoulders before her fingertips follow the curve of one, tracing along it to feel the lean definition of it, careful to keep her touch gentle, phantom light as she does so. How has she gone a month without this?

If she ever sees Soldier 76 again, she's going to break every bone in his fucking body and then double back on it out of spite.

Their time was precious before all of this went to hell. It's too precious to lose more of it, held between all of Moira's myriad obligations to the Ministries and to Talon and her own strict deadlines down in the machine shop, all ever-churning forward as Oasis seeks another means to procure or develop cutting-edge innovations in any manner of tech. She knows that their time will be even more limited when they return to Oasis, whenever that occurs, and she isn't looking forward to it. There's a part of her that intrinsically and wholly selfishly considers that they could stay in Junkertown. But they can't. 

But if they could...god, she would make ever minute of it count. 

Moira comes around slowly, an awakening that happens in slow increments. The shift in the other's breathing as it becomes less shallow, the fluttering of coppery lashes before scarlet and blue eyes start to slip open, and the languid, cat-like stretch that bears them a little further apart before that tall frame relaxes back into her. There's a moment in which those angular features nestle back to her chest and the taller woman exhales slowly, that she considers Moira may simply have gone back to sleep.

"Good morning, rabbit," the words are thick with sleep, thick with an accent that reminds her of a green salt sea, waves on a distant shore. 

Sliding her fingertips through red hair and tracing the outline of the other's ear, Jack whispers back, "Hey, babe."

Yeah. She could get used to this.

When her comm starts to buzz atop the headboard, she lifts a hand and feels along it until she catches it between her fingertips. 

"Yours or mine?" comes a drowsy inquiry from the woman nestled against her, so she flips the screen on to check. 

"Looks like mine," Jack replies with a bit of a yawn, using the pad of her thumb to scroll through the barrage of messages that have started to pour in. They light the communicator up repetitively for several seconds until seeming to finally stem. Trailing warm fingertips over the back of the other's neck in an idle fashion while she reads through them, she observes, "Comm channels are back up again."

Dark eyes half-lid as she rests her cheek atop Moira's head, she muses aloud, "Nothing wild. Chance wants me to check in with his mom while I'm out here. Someone with just...a skull emoji for a name says that you left your comm in the transport, but they should be back with it tonight."

"Olivia," is provided in a timbre raspy from sleep, Moira's breath warm through her shirt and against the skin.

She slowly taps out a reply to the message with her thumb, sending it off with another soft chime of the comm, and then tosses it atop the headboard once more, instead pulling up the blankets around Moira's shoulders a little further. 

Contentedness is not something she typically sees on those angular features, but god.

"You want me to be quiet so you can sleep?" she offers near the other's ear, a kiss placed there before she draws the smooth edge of her fingernails over the back of the taller woman's neck. _That_ elicits a soft sort of noise that makes her fingertips warm. 

While it yet bears a pronounced lilt from the throes of sleep, colouring those words to make her shiver a little, Moira's voice harbors a vague, dry mirth to it as it observes against her collarbone, "Curious."

"What is?" Jack inquires as her fingertips drift idly over the pale skin at the other's nape, occasionally trailing through the short, coppery-red hair above it. Possessed of a need to do so, she relinquishes that touch after a moment to instead shift her hands until she holds the other's angular features cupped within them, her thumbs stroking slowly up along the line of that sharp jaw in tandem. 

Moira's head tips back slightly, ocean-and-blood gaze vivid as it seeks her out in the morning light, if shrouded behind coppery lashes here and there as it starts to adjust to the illumination. No one has ever looked at her the way that Moira does, and as much as she would never admit it aloud, there's something about it that knocks the breath out of her a little every time. Makes her want to see it over and over, in as many contexts as possible.

The words are smoother, dip pleasantly as a faint smirk curls the corner of the other's lips, "I was not aware that you could do anything quietly."

The corner of Jack's lips curls up at that, revealing a flash of teeth at the teasing. She doesn't answer. Not immediately. Instead, she strokes the pad of her thumb over a sharp jaw once more, watches as those mismatched eyes slip closed and how Moira only just avoids craning into the touch.

Her slim, subtly calloused hand finds the other's shoulder, the other pressing into the bed as she hooks a knee around slim hips and simply shifts them, pushing the taller woman down onto the bed and settling comfortably enough over her in the same motion. Mismatched eyes slip open once more, a slight curl to the corner of the other's lips as Moira looks up at her. The stark contrast that is them strikes her for a moment. It's slim, coppery hands on white marble skin as she leans forward, a dark veil of raven hair that falls around them when a warm, lingering kiss finds its way to the curve of cool, soft lips in the early morning. 

There isn't a word spoken between them. Not at the first kiss. Not at the second. Not at the way that the third one she bestows finds its way to the column of Moira's neck instead. She transitions them slowly, a show of affection that shifts from feather-light to soft and slow, lingering there for a long while before it warms into something more. There really isn't a need for words, not now. She can find all her answers in the shift in colour over subtly freckled skin, the hints of rose that come to imbue it with warmth. The way that after a time, the other woman's breath carries only the faintest hint of a hitch. 

She takes her sweet time, drawing it out in a way that she knows that Moira likes. Beneath the jaw down the column of the throat, the other's head tipping back to allow her better access to it. Gently brushing to open-mouthed when she reaches the juncture of the shoulder and neck, pale skin tasting faintly of salt and faintly still of citrus soap, warming beneath her touch. 

Somewhere in the periphery, cool fingertips are light on her skin, find her wrist, the curve of her shoulder. By the time she nears the conclusion of her trail lower, a warm line of kisses that end just shy of the waistband of dark boxer briefs, the rise and fall of breath in the other's chest is all the more unsteady, a sharp inhalation heard when she leaves a mark prominently featured on the taller woman's hip bone. It'll fade sooner than it doesn't, with the nanites, but she likes the look of it there and decides to leave another, not missing the way that those hips roll slowly for her when she does.

There's a part of her that loves this, the stolen moments in which Moira is a mess, off-kilter, sprawled in the pillows on a Junkertown bed with a hand raking through red hair. When she knows she's made it through all the layers of armor and cool collectedness, stripped it all down to something real. She rests her chin to the plane of the other woman's hip, glancing up to take it in for a moment. The hint of colour painting milky white skin, prevalent beneath the freckles. The intensity that's crept into mismatched eyes, their rim of scarlet and blue receding slightly when she meets them. 

Off-kilter. She absolutely loves it.

"I'm going to do one thing quietly. Just for you," Jack promises, breath warm against freckled skin before she places a warmer kiss there. The soft nip that follows makes a muscle tense and relax in the taller woman's thigh, felt beneath her as it occurs. Warm fingertips find her cheek then, and she turns her head to kiss the tips of them lightly before confiding further, "And then, I'm going to go downstairs and get you some coffee. Because I missed your lanky ass."

There's no protest to that - not that she expected there to be, to be certain - only the shifting of impossibly long legs to accommodate the removal of boxer briefs and then the settling of a Junker between them. When she brushes another, gentler kiss to a smooth inner thigh, there's a slow, languid exhalation from the taller woman, and she can feel Moira sink back, relax into the pillows at the headboard. Warm fingertips sink into her hair, slowly gathering it for her. 

Their morning is found in the little spaces between breathy sounds and broken Gaeilge. In the long, pale limbs tangled in coarse Junkertown sheets, the lavender hand curled at the headboard and the other in her hair. It's the slow arch of a back, the languid roll of the hips. Ebb and flow, give and take, the thrum of music faint through the floorboards in the bar below until it all unravels, and all that remains are shaky, slow exhalations, a low sound that reverberates through flesh and bone to reach her. 

When she comes to rest alongside Moira afterwards, an arm draped around the other as she nestles back in close, curled to a frame that is languidly warm and still a little breathless, Jack simply traces her fingertips along the sharp line of the other's jaw. Watches the heady scarlet and blue of that gaze find hers from behind coppery lashes, hold it for a time, then slip slowly half-lid. It looks for a moment that the taller woman may fight it, but when she whispers softly, "Go back to sleep."

Well. There's a soft exhalation, the bare curl to the corner of the other's lips, and it's over from there. She stays like that a while, whiles away a portion of the morning in a little room in Junkertown that's just for them. When she does move, slowly disentangle from Moira O'Deorain, who has drifted back to sleep in the morning light, it's to shift toward the edge of the bed and set her bare feet down upon the timber floor. 

She leans back for a moment, glances over the tall frame sprawled amidst the sheets and threadbare quilts, and something in her chest feels light. Unburdened. The smile that curls over her coppery features doesn't dim this time. 

Moira is always the first to rise and the last to fall asleep, it seems. In their lives outside of Junkertown, she's fairly certain that the taller woman exists in some manner of perpetually driven yet exhausted fugue state, resting for stolen moments before wakening to another long, grueling day in the labs or embroiled in Ministry politics. No one should survive like that. Somehow Moira makes do on the bizarre alchemical compound that is nicotine, caffeine, and a innate need for discovery. For progress. Today is different. It only took the brink of the apocalypse, but there's no rush. No hurried meetings. No emergency down in the labs to attend to.

She stretches her arms above her head slowly, hearing something pop in the vicinity of her shoulder, and emits a disgruntled sound at the feeling. No pain accompanies it. Jack finds her feet afterwards, though turns back to shore the blankets up around freckled shoulders. Fondly smooths mussed red hair, which honestly remedies its state not in the slightest. 

Rising to her feet, she stretches one more time with languid effort at best, then pads around the panel into the room's makeshift bathroom. There's no shower, to be certain, but there is a sink and a basin and the cobbled together bath, and it isn't all that difficult to scrub the former in lieu of filling the entire bath once again. Teeth brushed in a dogged persistence to morning routine, she finds a comb near the bath to pull through her damp hair before it can dry in a mess. 

It isn't until Jack moves to fetch her bag and a fresh set of clothes that something catches her attention in the periphery. Beneath the slow, steady sound of Moira's breathing. Like a slow pull of cloth apart or perhaps paper being torn at a leisurely pace. Tearing bandages, perhaps? She shakes her head, toothbrush dropped into a tin cup as she looks around. It wouldn't be that loud up here. The jukebox downstairs is just audible. 

Shoulders rolling in a shrug, Jack pulls on clean clothes with a decided satisfaction for them. There are holes in the tattered knees of the red drab fatigues, one worn through while working on her mecha and the other torn on the edge of some sheet metal on the wall. There aren't any in the black tank-top that she throws on overtop it, thankfully. Though it is open at the sides, leaving a fair amount of coppery skin evident. Fuck it. It's comfortable, and it's not like she's not wearing anything under it. 

She's wondering if Moira may have a spare belt she could steal when that sound catches her attention again, dark eyes fixating near the table at its source. Anxiety starts to creep in when it occurs once again.

There's a distinct moment in which Barrel's head protrudes from the duffel bag near the table, a strip of teal fabric in his mouth, and her night-dark eyes meet his whiskey-brown. Jack freezes entirely, feeling a sudden chill prickle over her skin as his tail starts to thump softly inside the bag, and she watches with a sort of slowly dawning horror as he bunches up a familiar button-down between his white-socked paws, then pulls his head back to tear another long strip of fabric from it. 

_Fuck._

"Barrel, you _motherfucker_ ," Jack all but whispers, her dark eyes darting toward the bed where Moira appears to have fallen back asleep before she breathes out slowly. His tail thumps harder at the sound of his name, and a cold nose finds her hand not long after, a long puppy stretch given as he extricates himself from his makeshift nest. 

She's dreading what she'll find before she even opens it. It doesn't disappoint. It's scraps. Shreds, really. Torn up clothes that are more expensive than probably anything she has ever and will ever owned, excluding the dress that Moira bought her. Including her hoverbike. It takes her about ten minutes to sufficiently pick through the proverbial salvage, the only solace that the carefully sealed packets at the very bottom of the bag are still intact with a few days worth of clothes. 

Royally fucked seems an apt term for the moment, and she exhales in a slow breath before deciding to improvise. Her comm caught up, she uses the side of her boot to push Barrel away from a tattered button-down on the floor and checks the tags on some of the semi-intact trousers and shirts, coming up with a range that _should work_ by comparison.

Guess she's going to Swagman's before coming up with coffee. 

Of course _her bag_ , the one with the _actual dog food in plastic bags inside it_ , is completely intact and untouched. Tucking her comm into her pocket, she scoops him up under one arm, scolding him softly when he attempts to lick her face, and ruffles his ears with the accusation, "You're a shithead, mate."

Careful to lock the door behind her in case, Jack descends the stairs before setting Barrel back down on the floor.

The little dingo remains hot on her heels as she cuts outside, stepping out onto the front porch only to jump visibly when someone lobs something heavy at her from nearby. The Junker part of her immediately panics, wondering if it might be a grenade or some kind of ordinance. 

It's not.

The softball-sized orb of metal is hot from the sun already, bears the telltale iridescence here and there of oily fingerprints. 

When she looks up, she sees her brother looking at her with the cheekiest fucking grin. 

"Kamaka," Jack warns, giving him a look before simply pulling an arm around him, a fist pounded to his back before she releases him. Taller than her by a head, Kamaka Vargas is a lanky scrapper, wears the telltale swathe of red across his eyes that paints him as a Junkertown loyalist. His smile cuts white across a bronzed countenance, a shade darker even than hers, though the eyes are the same.

A cowled red scarf around his lean shoulders and leather pauldrons on, he looks every bit the Junker, a riff on traditional tattooing echoed in the whorling patterns that adorn his brow and eyes, ending near the tip of his nose to make him resemble some sort of devilish Outback crow.

"How's it?" his voice is like smoke over shards of metal, smooth and harsh all at once, but always warm. "You look better." 

Then, clicking his tongue to the roof of his mouth before he speaks and grin widening, he touches a knuckle to the side of her neck and asks, "You let the Stonefish give you a kiss before you killed it?"

He flicks one of the, admittedly more subtle than usual, marks at the column of her neck.

"Jesus. Stop that," Jack retorts with a snort of mirth, catching his wrist with her free hand as he attempts to do it again. Her lip curls to reveal teeth, a flashfire smile that doesn't dim when he laughs. "She doesn't need any fucking help, you dirty little brat."

"I learned from watching you," Kamaka retorts with a cunning smile, as he knows something she doesn't. Glancing over her once, he asserts, "Your Oasis girl has teeth. Claws, too, I hear." 

Folding his arms over his chest, he flicks a look toward the bar as if the woman in question may apparate, and when he looks back, his grin is all the wider, "She's going to need them. Mom wants you to bring her down for supper. Meet the family. _The twins want to show her their brumby_."

Jack is fairly certain that her expression blanks entirely at that, suspicions confirmed when her brother tilts his head back and laughs, a pleasantly rasping sound as dry as the summer sand. Holding the metal sphere in one hand, she uses the other to lift her middle finger at him, which only makes him chuckle harder. 

Narrowing her eyes faintly as she looks up at him, Jack hedges of a sudden, "You think it's too late to fake my own death? Stonefish still in the square? I'll go crawl under that bitch right now."

"Still there. Might be worth it," Kamaka retorts, his dark eyes glittering with mirth as he peers down at her. "Although killing a Stone might _almost_ make Mom forget you aren't seeing a Junker. Almost." That mischievous smile returns, wider, as he observes, "Four to one odds are that she puts a bullet in one of you before dessert. Do your brother a solid and try to drag it out that long. I'll make a killing."

She socks him in the shoulder, knuckles meeting firm muscle in a blow only half-pulled.

"I want fifty percent," she retorts, though soon tosses the orb in her other hand, asking him pointedly, "You going to tell me what this is or not?"

He chuckles in response, placing a cigarette between his lips and striking a match to light it up. It smells of cloves. Taking a puff of it, he offers it over. Jack takes it, a drag taken before she exhales a slow coil of smoke.

"Got something good for you out of the Stonefish," Kamaka confirms, pilfering the clove cigarette back thereafter. "Little birdie named Pao told me you were looking for some fancy titanium. Used my rig to get at it quick once the dust settled. Had to bare-knuckle two other scrappers for it. Never say your little brother never did anything for you, yeah?"

She blinks at that. Once. Slowly. Casting a thoughtful look over the orb, she polishes the fingerprints off it with the hem of her shirt. It's a solid ten pounds, she estimates. More than enough for a few runs if she's careful with the machine-work.

"Figured it was fair since you brought that shit down," her brother muses with a snort of his own, a raspy chuckle sounding soon after. He takes the cigarette back from her for another puff, flicking a bit of ash from it before adding, "Now about that bet...How long is your girl in town again?"

"Shut up," Jack retorts with a laugh, bumping him with her shoulder. Lifting her chin at him in a nod, she tosses the orb from hand to hand as she intones, "You find any more of this, let me know? I'll toss you some credits for the trouble. We get this to work, could be a big deal in some circles."

Then, with another soft snort of mirth, "Don't know how long, but her name's Moira. Not 'your girl'."

With a nod toward the dingo at her feet, pouncing at the red dirt as he attempts to pin down a scuttling beetle, Jack observes, "Gotta run to Swagman's and get her some clothes. Some little asshole chewed up all her luggage last night."

"Oh, I'm pretty sure everyone who slept over upstairs knows her fucking name, Jack," Kamaka retorts with a sharp laugh and an uncalled for amount of raw mischief to his expression. Grinning nearly from ear to ear as he takes another puff from his cigarette, he observes, "You're not subtle. They probably heard you down on the flats."

"Next time I'll aim for Sydney. You're my least favorite brother," Jack demotes him blithely, winking at him before she starts to walk, the taller Vargas keeping easy pace with her. "You need anything from Swag's? I'm about to throw down a mess of credits if you want to pick anything up."

"Can't hurt to look," he observes idly, rolling his shoulders smoothly as they head up the street. "You should see this piece of shit brumby Mom got the twins. Meaner than a kicked wasp's nest."

"What'd they end up naming it?" Jack asks as they cut down an alley toward the shop in question, her fingertips brushing a sheet metal wall pock-marked with pulse rounds. 

"Satan," Kamaka replies around a puff of his cigarette. "It's fitting."

"Come on, Barra," Jack intones when it seems the dingo trailing her may stop to nose about in what looks like bloody scraps of cloth, and the little creature's ears perk up at the name. A funny little howl sounds from him before he trots in their wake. Barra? Barrel. She hasn't made a call on it just yet, but she has to admit that the first one is starting to grow on her a little. 

"Barra?" her brother asks with an arched brow, dark eyes glittering against coppery skin and black tattoos. 

"Satan?" Jack retorts just as easily, a little bit of a smirk touching her expression. "It's Irish. I think. Got a whole 'animals need people names' thing going on." Rolling her shoulders slightly, she observes, "It's pretty close to Barrel, yeah?"

The door hits a small bell when she opens it, stepping into the a cramped, shelf-riddled store with odds and ends packed to the ceiling. It smells like machine oil and metal, the bite of chemicals, the must of old leather. The majority of the wares that Swagman carries are salvage, pilfered from any number of old military bases in the shadow of the Omnium. The rest are shipments received from up in Melbourne or Sydney, the occasional run out of Perth. Not all of the shipments were _purchased_ per say, but that's neither here nor there. It's enough to keep Junkertown up and running, make up for the few things they can't make on their own. 

An ancient, tattooed woman with sunken, bullet-grey eyes sits behind the counter, eyes them shrewdly as they enter.

"How's it, Nana Ava?" Jack is quick to say, a hand raised in greeting. Kamaka nods and offers his own hello afterwards, and the old woman huffs, not responding to them, but sitting back down in her chair.

She can hear the soft 'click' of a safety being set back in place from behind the counter. You do not fuck with Danny's grandmother. Everyone in Junkertown knows that. Just like they know that you say hello when you walk in, and goodbye or good afternoon when you leave. And if she asks you to come nearer the counter to get a look at you, you goddamn do it. 

The amount of people who have left Swagman's in riddled with buckshot after thinking they were being slick pocketing this or that, or outright trying to rob it at gun or knife-point is...high, to say the least. Nana Ava is a pro at the _settle your own scores_ bit of being a Junker. 

It takes a while. Probably the better part of an hour, and she's willing to bet money that by the time that she returns to the bar, Moira will be up and have noticed the Great Luggage Massacre, but she finds what she's looking for and then some. 

Scrap sent down to her tech bunker so she can start retrofitting the spare scout chassis into a replacement Jackrabbit. A passable regulator for her hoverbike, which she'll need to streamline and modify heavily to be half as flash as the one she had. The stack of clothes easily _far_ too tall for her earns her a shrewd look from Nana Ava, as do some of the various sundries tossed alongside it, but it's all counted out or set for transport down to the flats in prompt fashion. 

She doesn't haggle with Nana Ava, as she might with Swagman were he running the show today. Another unwritten rule in the land of no rules. Don't haggle with the woman with a shotgun. Instead, she transfers an appropriate amount of creds to cover both her purchases and Kamaka's heap, a few odds and ends for the twins, and takes a military duffel bag to pack them up herself while Nana Ava feeds Barra a dog biscuit.

"Thanks, Nana Ava. Have a good one, yeah?" Kamaka intones as they head out with their purchases and one very pleased dingo in tow, a sentiment that Jack repeats in like kind before offering another little wave. 

"Not a bad haul," Jack observes with a nod toward her brother's satchel of odds and ends, scrap that he can adjust to turn a profit on later. That's her brother. Ever the opportunist. "See you at supper, yeah?"

He gives her a mock salute, dark eyes glittering as he heads off toward the lift with his new acquisitions. He'll meet Danny at the base of the cliffs, make sure everything is sorted and sent out to her folk's without too much trouble.

When she returns to the bar, Barra's claws clicking softly on the timber behind her, the jukebox is playing softly in the corner and it looks to have been cleared out some. That doesn't surprise her. Most Junkers would be in a hurry to head back to their own lodgings, with their own people, lick their wounds where no one else is there to stare at them. A few remain, those injured the worst, under the watchful eye of the Talon medics who have partitioned off a section of the bar. 

And where there's medics...well. It doesn't take her long to find a pot of unattended coffee and two tin mugs, if no sugar or milk. She tosses a few credits Wolf's way for it, nodding to him from across the room and seeing the cursory nod of thanks in return before she heads back up the stairs.

When she slips back into the room, it doesn't appear that Moira has been up that long. Settled comfortably upon the bed, lean shoulders to the headboard and long legs stretched out, the geneticist's short, fiery red hair is delightfully mussed still. The black-rimmed spectacles are new, perched on the freckle-dusted bridge of a nose as mismatched eyes scan over a datapad in the other's lap. The sheet metal barrier on the window has been opened, the window slats beneath it, and the late morning light paints milky skin and cinnamon-tinted freckles subtly golden beneath its touch. 

"Mm. No shirt and specs is an _excellent_ look," Jack observes with a soft chuckle, latching the door behind her. The room still smells faintly of citrus soap, a little like red earth, as all of Junkertown does. A little of beer - likely from the bar below. The thrum of the jukebox can only just be heard through the floorboards, playing a tune she hasn't heard in ages. "I give it a ten out of ten."

Not as much of a sound buffer as she thought there might be. Maybe Kamaka was right. She doesn't care all that much, if she's being honest with herself. They're all Junkers. They've probably heard worse. Barra's nails click softly on the timber as he trots over toward the bed with her. She tosses the duffel bag at the end of it, then shifts over toward Moira's side of it to set both cups of coffee onto the nightstand. 

"You keep after-office hours, professor?" Jack asks with a coy wink, bending to catch the other's lips in a warm kiss that lingers longer than it doesn't. They still aren't used to being back near one another again, and she feels it. The balancing act as they try to settle back into it, without tilting every interaction back into bed. It's a conscious effort. If she had a week to do nothing but, she'd dead-bolt the door and latch the window, and call it.

There's a low chuckle from the taller woman when she withdraws with a wink, the spectacles drawn from perched atop a freckled nose and set upon the bedside stand so as not to fog them up with the coffee. Moira's voice is still thick from sleep, it's lilting accent pronounced, "Not for you, rabbit. I would provide you with demerits for being an unapologetic brat."

"That's a pity. I'd _put in work_ for the grade," Jack teases back, a little laugh escaping her as she moves back toward the duffel bag to start to unpack it. With a cheeky glance toward the taller woman, she drawls out, "Maybe more extra credit than you could even handle."

"An interesting hypothesis," comes the lilting response, a husky note to it, though it's no less touched with mirth for it. A chuckle follows thereafter. Mismatched eyes survey the coffee in the tin mug before Moira takes a tentative sip, seemingly deciding that it is, in fact, palatable before taking a larger one afterwards. " _Go raibh maith agat_. You are an angel."

"Not sure how I feel about angels these days," Jack retorts with a little snort, though the corner of her mouth turns up. Dark eyes half-lid as she looks toward Moira, she requests, "Say something else?"

" _Is é sin níos fear_?" is the reply.  
** Is that better?

"Mhm." It's a simple enough request, one that's easily fulfilled. She just likes the sound of it. The way the words roll like the ebb and flow of the tides. Someday she'd like to know what it all means. Maybe she can look into that when they're back in Oasis. Surprise that lanky thing someday, though she knows it'll never sound as good in her voice as it does in Moira's. 

"Barra went through your luggage and shredded...a lot of it," Jack comes clean as she tosses another stack of clothing on the end of the bed, faded jeans, dark fatigues, some flat black, the closest thing she could find to slacks. "I went down to Swagman's and picked up a few things in case you ran out of shit to wear. Wasn't sure how long you were staying."

With sincerity, she promises, "I can pay you back. I'm not sure how he got your bag down in the first place."

"Come here." It's simple. Direct. Compelling in that smooth, low timbre - in ways it probably shouldn't be. 

Dark eyes snap up to meet mismatched, reading them for a moment before sweeping over sculpted features in the late morning light, tracing the way sharp cheekbones catch it on one side, shadowed on the other. There's an obstinate part of her that wants _not to_ just to see what happens, but another that has her boots headed in that direction anyways when Moira crooks a finger.

She cocks her head to one side once she stands near the other, a quizzical expression to her coppery features and one dark brow arched. 

Not spilling a drop of coffee, which is a feat in itself, the taller woman catches ahold of the fabric at her hip, pulling her over until she's seated beside the other, facing her, one palm on the mattress to Moira's other side to prop her up. That hand finds the front of the loose shirt she's wearing then, pulling her forward. This kiss tastes of coffee, warm and languid, though it ends with a nip to her lower lip. 

Another sip from the tin cup later, Moira slides a warm hand through the side of her shirt, fingertips tracing lightly over the faint peppering of shrapnel scars at her ribcage as the other remarks in a whiskey and smoke timbre, "I am well aware of the state of my personal effects. Should I elect to exact payment for them, it will not be monetary."

"Oh, really now?" Jack answers with a laugh of her own, nose brushing to the other's cheek before she places a warm kiss there.

"Stay," Moira directs then, the hint of a smirk curling the corner of her mouth at the look she receives for that.

"I'm not a dog, you right shit," Jack snorts softly with the words, an incredulous mirth imbuing her cadence, though she doesn't move from where she is, content in their nearness for the time.

"But you _are_ very good at following directions, rabbit," comes the return observation, more than a little wry lilt to the intonation. That smirk curls a little further, Moira's countenance bordering on wholly smug in a way that's both infuriating and attractive. "Perhaps your _creature_ will learn something through observation." 

Then, lighter, "Practice makes perfect."

"You're lucky I like you," she retorts, the smile that curls the corner of her lips offsetting any barb to the words. As if on cue, there's a soft growl from beside the bed. "Someone doesn't."

A knuckle brushes beneath her chin, fingers lightly grasping it thereafter to hold her still as Moira leans forward, a feather-soft kiss placed to the scar at the apex of her lip. Her dark lashes flutter for it, eliciting a further pleased look from the taller woman before her, freckles prominent at this distance. 

"His behavior is not unexpected," comes the taller woman's assertion, a smooth lilt to those words. A thumb traces the curve of her lower lip, the brushes her cheek as Moira speaks, "Biology's habits are hard to break. As he is a wild dog, not domesticated, they will be more difficult to circumvent. It will likely take him time to warm to the notion that he has a rival for your attention."

There's a brief glance toward the side of the bed, before Moira muses idly, "And to adjust to the shift in social structure, so to speak. Hierarchy."

"Mhm. And I suppose you think you're at the top of that hierarchy, O'Deorain?" Jack observes with a little laugh, her expression fond nonetheless. The coffee is set aside, and her skin prickles with gooseflesh when taloned nails come to rest lightly to the bare, coppery skin at her side, ghost over the curve of it. 

"You did come when I called," those scarlet and blue eyes settle to hers, the smirk on freckled features all the more prominent as they fall half-lid. "Not an altogether uncommon occurrence." There's a pointed pause, then, "Is it, Jacqueline?"

That makes her laugh aloud, shoulders shaking with it as she leans forward, arms draping around Moira's shoulders as she responds warmly, "You're fucking _terrible_."

It's impossible not to laugh again, a softer sound this time at the other's wordplay. Jack can feel a smile curve against the line of her jaw where Moira is, a low response brushed there, "So I keep hearing."

"How long do I have you in Junkertown, babe?" she asks then, more softly and more than a little warmly as she slides her fingertips into the other's hair, watching the way the ends flicker like bits of flame in the late morning light and doing little to smooth it in the process. She doesn't really care to. 

As good as Moira impeccably dressed, imperious, is, she loves this more. Mussed. Messy. Scarlet and blue eyes tired but fond behind coppery lashes, the walls behind them razed to the dusty red earth. 

"Through the end of the week, I imagine," the response is honest. It's more time than she imagined. "Perhaps into a second. Akande wishes to maintain a presence in Junkertown once we have departed, build a lasting connection here. He will not wish to depart until he is certain that defenses are back in order and the other items have been accomplished properly."

"He won't have to try too hard," Jack muses as she traces the outline of the other's ear with a gentle touch. "Jaeden wants to spar with him already. That's usually how she makes friends. Well. If they survive, really. And I'd be surprised if half the Queensguard don't ask him to sign their armour at this point."

"Your Queen," comes the observation, low and lilting as cool fingertips brush further along her side and then taloned nails draw lightly back over it. Moira's expression is calculating, thoughtful, more than a little intense as the other mulls something over, then simply asks, "Has it been more amenable?"

She wrinkles her nose faintly in response. It's a simple question with a somewhat broader meaning, and Moira knows how she feels about Jaeden already. That is to say - complicated. 

Dark eyes settling to mismatched, Jack brushes her nose lightly to the other's and responds honestly, "For the most part. We're finding a way to make it work. Made it about a month before we went bare knuckles in the Scrapyard."

"And I suppose you were victorious in the matter?" the other asks with a mild amusement, as if somehow knowing that would be important to her.

"Not even a little," Jack answers with a slowly spreading, if faintly insincere smile at the confession. "First blood, then we scrapped it out in the dirt until my _mother_ happened by and threw a bucket of water on us. It was lucky. Pretty sure she'd have snapped a rib on me otherwise."

An icy knuckle traces slowly along the curve of her ribcage at that, as if following the bone beneath with laser precision. She's starting to wonder if she should add more easy access shirts to her wardrobe moving forward. She's certainly not complaining, despite the oft cool quality of the other's touch. The attention is nice.

Drawing the smooth edge of her nails lightly over the nape of Moira's neck in turn, Jack feels no small sense of satisfaction at the low, pleased sound that emanates from the taller woman's chest for it. She confides further, a mischievous tilt to the corner of her lips, "My mother, incidentally, who wants me to bring you around for supper tonight. You want to go?"

For a long moment, Moira simply stares at her as if she's said something _wild_ , a subtle surprise, if not outright incredulity alighting upon the taller woman's sharp features before it gives way to a husky laugh. A bemused humor permeates the other's low, lilting timbre as they chuckle, "Have you any conceivable idea, Jacqueline, how long it has been since _anyone_ attempted to take me home to meet their _mother_?"

"I can promise that it'll be _terrible_ ," Jack assures, nose brushing lightly to the other's freckled one. "My mother will hate you because you aren't a Junker. My little brothers will pester you incessantly." A peck placed to the tip of Moira's nose then, she adds with a cheeky wink, "We could fool around in my room? Might even let you get to second base if you're lucky."

There's the arch of one perfect brow at that, the sole beat of a half-chuckle before Moira replies, "Quaint." Then with a dry humor, "I will attend."

"Oi, Jack!" A masculine voice sounds through the door. Tas, probably, based on the timbre. She jumps a bit at the sound. "You in there? Queen wants you up in the 'yard."

"For _what_?" Jack retorts back with a subtle exasperation, turning to address Moira with a much softer, "I swear to fucking god." 

"They're patching Sov," Tas answers, the soft thump of his shoulder to the doorframe heard, making it clear that he's not leaving until she comes out. "She wants to have it done today in case we get another wave. Also, your boys are back with the transport, yeah?"

"You want to write me a doctor's note?" Jack whispers to the taller woman before her, the corner of her lips twitching up despite the irritation that touches her features at the news. "Tell her I'm on bed rest?"

"Bed rest is it?" Moira inquires in a lilting timbre, not looking overly pleased either. Mismatched eyes drifting back toward her, the taller woman observes, "It would be best if I conversed with Akande, if they have indeed returned."

"Think of it as creative license?" Jack retorts with a sly wink, though exhales in a slight sigh and nods afterwards. Shifting forward slowly, she kisses the taller woman slowly and warmly, the gesture lingering pleasantly for a moment before she asks, "Walk up with me? I'd bet they're near the 'yard anyway."

There's a perfunctory nod at that. 

"We'll be up in a minute, Tas. Gotta get dressed and shit, yeah?" Jack calls toward the door. "Talon boys up in the Scrapyard?"

"Yeah, mate. I'll tell her you'll be up, right?" 

"Yeah," Jack calls back, slowly shifting from where she is and toward the edge of the bed. Boots hitting the floor, she stretches slowly, then moves toward the far table.

\--- 

It's criminal, she thinks, how good Moira looks in _literally anything_. Tall and imperious, a demeanor she is familiar with on the other, the geneticist opted for some of the new Junker wear for the day, likely in concession to the oppressive Outback heat. She looks like she could have been in the military, Jack thinks, with the way she holds herself. The black fatigues belted, the black boots given a precursory shine before the other had slid them on. A thin black shirt, long-sleeved to protect from the sun. It contrasts sharply with pale, freckled skin, and she can see the leanly muscled curvature of the other's shoulders beneath in a way that is distinctly bothering her at the moment, even buried elbow-deep in the internal workings of Sovereign's new arm.

They had very nearly not made it to the Scrapyard. Turns out she can't be trusted to help anyone put on sunscreen. If the way Moira's eyes keep flicking over toward her are any indication, the taller woman hasn't forgotten. It would be hard to. They had been well into taking those Junker clothes _back off_ when Tas had come back up to pound on the door again.

Fucker.

Finding the cable she wants and adjusting it, Jack listens to the conversation in the background, Akande and the strike team catching Moira up to speed in normal speaking voices. Bartholeme is dead. She knows that much. She's more interested in the snatches of conversation she's heard about the data cache they pulled out of the bunker they found him in. Omnium information is valuable, and if it has any schematics in it, she wants a crack at it later.

She also wants time to study the Stonefish cold laser, but that doesn't look like it's in the cards today. It's sprawled out in the red earth nearby, along with several large plates of red-drab metal, which they've been welding and working on to re-armour Jaeden's mecha through the late morning and into the early afternoon. It goes quicker than it probably should. Largely because they're all working on it in tandem, a situation she's more familiar with than she isn't.

By the time they've made significant progress in repairing Sovereign's arm, sweat is prickling at her scalp, dampens the back of her shirt, smears of machine oil and metal shavings flecking over her coppery skin. Long, dark hair tied back from her features in a knot, Jack strikes up a heat patch and starts to work it over the gauntlet of the shield arm. 

"Oi, Jae," she calls out after a minute, not looking up to see a blue-crested head turn toward her from beside Akande. "How many of these do you want on here?"

Nodding toward the short, hooked spines they've fashioned from the spines snapped off the Stonefish, she awaits an answer.

"Just replace the ones that broke off, bunny. Think there were six," comes a gruff retort.

"You have them salvage the optics on that fucker?" she asks then, starting to set a few of the spines into the hot metal and affix them at an appropriate angle so as not to cause troubles with maneuverability. "Might be able to hook up some heat sig view for you if you did."

So it goes. Junkers and Talon conversing in the late morning as the sun shifts toward noon, sweltering overhead. The metal shimmers, hot to the touch. The dust smells subtly burnt, over-warm, kicks up here and there in a molten breeze that does little to cool any of them. Vance comes by with jars of water after a while, and she glances up in the direction of the Talon strike team, watching them deep in discussion with Jaeden over something or another.

Mismatched eyes find hers over the shoulder of a shorter man, his ash-brown skin smoking subtly where it's exposed, and Jack offers a faint, fond smile and a little wave. There's the barest curl to the corner of the taller woman's mouth before that gaze shifts back to Akande.

There isn't any trouble at all for a while. No thrown blows. No testing one another, testing the tentative olive branch Talon has offered. Nothing of note at all until she's crouched near the shin of the Stonefish with a fired up arc welder and first one and then the other of her youngest brothers collide with her back. There's the smell of burning metal, then burning leather, then burning skin as the arc attachment slices through the mecha, her glove, and damn near takes her finger off at the knuckle. 

" _Son of a fuck_ ," it's excessively loud. Maybe not excessively, given how much the fucking thing hurt or the moisture gathering in the corners of her eyes when she manages to switch off the tool and throws it down into the red dirt, sucking in a shaky breath with the arms of one of her siblings still wrapped around her neck. "Jesus fucking _fuck_." The words follow swiftly before she utters a terse, "What did I _tell you_ about while I'm working?"

"Iono," Timoti answers, his cheek pressed to hers from over her shoulder. Clinging to her like a spider monkey. Maybe a _tick_ , she contemplates. 

"Jaaaack," Tama adds, and she can hear the frown in his voice, "Don't be mad. Jaaaack. Pleeease."

" _Hey babe_?" Jack calls over toward the circle of Talon members and Junkers, her voice more than a little strained. She pulls the glove off slowly. It doesn't look great. God it fucking hurts. That shit went down to the bone and then a little in. It's not bleeding at least. 

Because the fucking arc welder cauterized it immediately.

"Does it hurt?" Timoti asks, reaching out over her shoulder as if to touch the white and red marking her knuckle, the little hint of black on what little bone is visible.

She catches his hand with her uninjured one, states firmly, "Don't you fucking dare."

"Mom," Jack calls over toward the benches further up in the Scrapyard then, where the older woman is perched, working on her rifle. "Really?"

It takes little more than a stern look from her mother to send the twins back a few steps, but they hover like vultures when she levers up to her feet as Moira walks over to take her hand into both of the other's. Every touch prickles beneath the skin unpleasantly, shooting along the nerve endings until it reaches the sharp ache at her knuckle. 

"Injured again?" It's more an observation than a statement in that low lilt of a voice.

"You're tall," Tama observes as he looks up at Moira, dark eyes curious and hands on his hips.

"How did you get that tall?" Timoti pounces on the train of thought, circling around as if he might discern it through scrutiny. 

"She eats her vegetables and doesn't sneak up on people while they're _goddamn working_ ," Jack answers dryly, though gestures with her free hand toward the dingo pup sprawled at the foot of the steps in the dirt. "Why don't you go bother Barra a bit, yeah?"

A sharp pain lances through her hand at a more thorough inspection of the wound and makes a sickening feeling coil in her stomach, and she blinks rapidly when her vision spots a bit, then observes to the taller woman, "I am absolutely going to pass out if you do that again." 

"Tell me how this feels," Moira instructs in a low, firm timbre and presses lightly on the first knuckle instead.

She wraps her hand in the hip of the taller woman's fatigues, brow coming to rest to the other's collarbone as she confides, "It fucking sucks." At the swift breath she knows is about to precede a pointed conversation about the vagueties of her answer, she clarifies, "I can feel it."

"Highly descriptive," Moira observes dryly at that.

"Why's your arm purple?" Tama asks then, dark eyes nothing short of inquisitive as he peers up at the doctor beside her. When there's no answer forthcoming, and instead a contemplative hum for Jack instead, he tugs at the hem of her shirt to get her attention and asks, "Jack, why's her arm purple?"

"Tama," maybe it's the tone of her voice as her patience draws swiftly and suddenly towards an end. "If you don't leave me alone for five minutes, I'm going to pitch you off the bloody cliffs."

Maybe it's the way her hand slips into her pocket and pulls out a few credits, tossing them into the red dirt, "Take that down to Swag's or something. Christ."

He snatches up the credits from the dirt, hugs her suddenly, then trots over toward his twin to grab him by the arm, the pair soon bolting out of the Scrapyard with Barra hot on their heels. 

"Hold still," Moira's timbre is low and firm, brooks little argument as the taller woman's hand takes hers into it. A soft, golden glow emanates from where their skin touches, and slowly, the skin starts to knit and regenerate. It feels warm, good, chases away the throbbing in the bone and further up toward her wrist.

"Thanks," Jack murmurs once the other has released her hand, flexing the digit tentatively, if slowly. It's stiff, but whole. Subtly pink a weal at the joint still, but still slowly knitting together. Far better than scorched skin down to the bone. 

She uses the coppery fingertips of her other hand to catch Moira lightly by the chin before the taller woman can retreat, tilts up to place a light kiss to the other's lips in thanks. With a faint, wry smile Jack observes, "This is starting to become a bad habit. Maybe you should stick around just in case."

There's a low chuckle at that, the cursory inspection of the healed knuckle before Moira lifts it to brush a light kiss to the digit in response, then releases it.

"Do try to be careful, will y-" the words cut off sharply in that lilting timbre when a muscular, tanned shoulder collides hard with a lean, freckled one, and she sees in an instant the dangerous way those scarlet and blue eyes glitter. What flits behind them like a shadow through distant trees is _displeased_.

"You two done holding hands?" Jaeden is feeling some sort of way to decide that this is the appropriate bone to pick with her today. It's two steps back after their tentative step forward toward something amicable. Flexing her authority in a way that's already pushing the boundaries of how far Jack is willing to bend. Firm-boned features tip toward the mecha as that rough-edged voice asserts, "You have work to do."

Her coppery skin prickles at the nape of the neck, between her shoulders, and it has nothing to do with the heat. It has nothing to do with the sharp-hot pain that lanced up her arm a minute before. It has everything to do with...whatever this is that Jaeden's trying to prove right now.

She locks eyes with the Junker Queen then, dark against hazel as she states smoothly, with more than a current of heat, the smoke over fire that's threatening to catch like so much kindling within her chest, "This is what we're doing right now?"

Dark eyes search the other's before she confides, utterly serious, "You keep up with this shit, you can fix Sovereign your fucking self. I can find something better to do with my time. Like rebuilding the 'rabbit."

Hazel eyes narrow faintly at that, a familiar look in them. Jaeden states roughly, "Did I ask you what you wanted to do today?"

The rest of it is unsaid. _Or did I tell you what to do_.

If this is how she wants to play it, fine. Jack is done. She is absolutely, one hundred percent done with whatever power play is brewing between them. The answer is her middle finger, raised pointedly for Jaeden's benefit as Jack observes simply, "Go fuck yourself."

The wounds run deep. She's starting to realize that maybe she and Jaeden shouldn't be around each other at all. A constant picking at scars until they start to bleed anew. She's done. She's done in a way that she wasn't done, even when she left for Oasis. She's done pretending that this can work, that they can be around in proximity. The Jae that she remembers was brash, confident, bold as fuck, with a rough laugh that sounded warm as the Outback sun and eyes like where the red earth met the gold of the morning sun. 

How much of that did she see through rose-tinted glasses? How much of it is coloured by everything that happened after? They were on again and off again so fast and so often that it made her head spin for _so long_ , but there was always the inevitability that they would be _on again_. And that's gone now. Maybe that's it.

Maybe she wasn't like this before either. There's a streak of iron in her a mile wide that's tired of taking Jaeden's shit just for the sake of who they used to be. She certainly isn't going to stand here and watch Jae put her hands on _Moira_ of all people. 

_Don't fuck with what's mine,_ her eyes say as they hold a hazel gaze in the early afternoon. 

When the Junker Queen takes a half-step forward, Jack balls up her fists, coppery knuckles paling from the pressure and shoulders set in a straight line. If they're about to scrap again, she'll make Akande proud or go down trying. Jaeden's eyes glitter in the light like a wounded animal's. As if Jack is the trap and Jaeden the wounded limb, one that needs to be gnawed off to survive. One that's about to put teeth to her and test how easy she is to break.

The way that her heart stops has nothing to do with that look. It has everything to do with the talon-nailed, pale lavender of a slender hand that comes to rest on Jaeden's shoulder, and the low, lilting timbre of a voice that states in the strongest accent she's heard out of Moira, "That is _quite enough_."

It slices like a razor, bleeds all the cocky brashness out of Jaeden's expression to replace it with iron and fire, the low gleam of amber eyes that glow like a wolf's in the early Junkertown afternoon. They bleed everything that isn't rough out of that voice to leave it a jagged, authoritarian thing, like the rust-pitted metal of a scrapper's crown, "You want to have this out, Oasis?"

There's a slow turn of firm-boned features to face Moira, a dismissive glance of amber-hazel eyes over that tall silhouette before Jaeden states pointedly, "I didn't think so." Then, without looking toward her, she says to Jack, "Get back to work. _Now_."

Moira is a few inches taller than Jaeden, though desperately more slender for all the lithe musculature she knows that form contains, but as a lip curls back in the nearest to a sneer she's seen mark those sculpted features, the thought strikes her. Jaeden isn't the wolf at all. No primeval creature to slip through the coiling, silver-white mists of an isle of stone and moss. No. That title finds itself in a sharp expression and a sharper line of ivory teeth. She's felt them on her skin before, hard enough to bruise even when tender. They look fit to tear the throat from the shorter woman in their purview. 

There's a stark contrast between them. A wild crest of blue hair defines Jaeden, short at the sides and mohawked along the centre, a braid worked into the section between. It's cast with hints of dust and rust and metal from work in the Scrapyard, and the flaking red paint that stripes over the Queen's eyes lends a ferocity to firm-boned features even further than what is innate to them. Jaeden is broader at the shoulders than Moira, a frame firm in its muscular definition. Jaeden is the Junkyard dog rattling at its chain to Moira's wolf in the forest. The sledgehammer to her scalpel.

Maybe it's the way that her fingers curl around a slender, palely lavender wrist then, or the subtle flinch beneath them. Familiar on a limb not accustomed to touch. Maybe it's that Moira hasn't backed down yet, and how Jaeden isn't either. Maybe it's the last straw of her refusal to simply listen.

Her eyes, caught somewhere betwixt charcoal and coffee in colour in the early afternoon light, motes of dust dancing in what amber veils of it drift between the support beams and scrap metal overhead, shift between the two as she starts to speak, "Babe, it's not w-"

"Shut up, bunny," Jae's words prickle beneath her skin.

" _Éasca sin_. Lest evolution work _quickly_ today," comes Moira's response, not to her, those mismatched eyes set firmly upon the Queen. The warning is clear when it comes, low and lilting in that timbre, "It is not my preference to see to matters personally, but I will see them done if I must."  
** Easy now

Neither of them moves and the ripple of discomfort through the Scrapyard is palpable. Junkers start to drift towards the back rooms for a break. Toward the entrance to the Scrapyard. It wouldn't be the first time that Jack and Jaeden had a row here. It would be the first time anyone else was involved in it. 

Soon, the only ones that remain are her little brothers, running over to where her mother sits in the stands with their armfuls of snacks. A woman with ombre hair tipped in purple who keeps a hand not far from her weapon, as if she may have to use it, the one with the blue-tinted complexion that rests a light hand on the other's hand and shakes her head slowly as if to dissuade her. 

"Alright, rabbit," comes the concession in that low, lilting timbre as mismatched eyes divert toward her, and she starts to exhale in a slow breath. Her hand is still on that lavender-tinted wrist, feeling the bones, slim and bird-like beneath the coolness of the flesh when Moira moves to step around the Junker Queen, presumably leave with her. 

But where there's a show of weakness, Jaeden is on it like a pack of wild dogs. That much hasn't changed. When Moira moves, there's a sudden tension in Jaeden's shoulder and it cocks back faster than she can think. Faster than she can say _anything_. She suspects, when mismatched eyes flick sidelong. When the tension breaks like a roar of thunder overhead and blood pours out. That her expression must have said everything.

Because it doesn't hit Moira. No. Jack is standing beside Sovereign when the wrist in her hand becomes black mist in her hand, a miasma that roils and curls, that darts suddenly several feet away. Instead, the Junker Queen's knuckles emit a sharp 'crack' as they rattle against the massive, armored exterior of the Sovereign mecha, and it must bruise deeply. It's full force, blunt trauma, Jaeden's head whipping around to find out where the target of her ire went.

The lithe silhouette that appears from a pillar of black smoke and mist nearby is no less ready than the Junker Queen is for what's coming, if the slow rolling of lean shoulders and the cracking of the taller woman's neck are any indication. She watches Moira slowly roll up each sleeve of that thin, black shirt to the elbow in a precise fashion. Imagines that she would do the same in her day-to-day attire in Oasis if it came to. It surprises her, the ease with which it's done. Seems incongruous with the image that she has, until a new one takes its place. 

Set the jacket aside neatly. Call it fisticuffs instead of a brawl. Moira, behind her desk, the tie loosened around a slender neck, the curve of knuckles well-bruised, a fifth of whiskey in one slender hand, cold condensation beading on the glass.

Jack knew what to do when it as her and Jaeden, when she thought they were a snap decision, an idle remark away from scrapping it out in the red dirt for the second time since she returned home. She does not know what to do with this. This isn't a water bucket away from being over. This isn't a gunshot fired overhead. She's seen this look on Jaeden's face before, under vastly different circumstances. Jae isn't going to stop. 

And god, does she not know if Moira can fight. There's a big difference between that tall, lanky frame putting her up against a wall for fun and brawling with the Junker Queen in the Scrapyard. Moira O'Deorain isn't standing like a scientist before a workstation anymore, though. There's impeccable poise, as always, but a shift in the overall stance as if that lithe creature, wholly incongruous in Junkertown, were squaring up with a woman who literally fought in the Scrapyard as a gladiator.

Jack has no idea what to do with that.

"Moira," Akande's voice is a low, resonant intonation near the benches, where he rest. He looks unconcerned and that doesn't settle her nerves. She wonders if it should. "Is this truly necessary?"

"Babe, we can just..." Jack jerks a thumb toward the entrance of the Scrapyard, her mouth suddenly a little dry.

"I believe it is at this juncture," comes a cool response, rolling like waves against a rocky shore. Ocean-and-blood eyes appraise the Queen as if she were something smaller and much less significant than she is. A bothersome insect to be flicked away. There's an almost haughty expression on those freckled features now, a note that carries over to the voice when Moira speaks, "Settle your own scores, isn't it?"

God, that's a rhetorical question if she's ever fucking heard one.

"Grand," Moira drawls out with seeming satisfaction for having remembered. It's all for show, to taunt. To dig around under the skin and incite a reaction. Chemical. Physical. Jack has never observed Moira to forget anything, no matter how minute the detail, thus far. And Jaeden is tracking every movement, the rebalance of that lithe frame, as if to determine where to strike and how to do it to inflict maximum collateral damage. 

When there's another lunge forward, it pulls short. A feint, succeeding in making that lithe form dissipate into smoke once more. And Jack? She does little else but watch Jaeden watch Moira, track the distance traveled. Track the way that the other moved and to where and to what distance. It's a process that's repeated. Once. Twice. Three times. Before Moira blinks back into existence and takes the very end of a blow to the jaw, the extension required landing it less than full force by the time it impacts. 

Another blow to the ribs. Disappear. The shoulder. Disappear. The last has blood trickling from a freckle-dusted nose, but the trajectory never changes.

It has to hurt. She had been on the receiving end of those knuckles not long past. Jaeden doesn't pull punches. All she can do is hope that the next hit doesn't land harder than the last, hit solidly enough to break a bone or rattle a skull.

The trajectory never changes. Bruises are starting to accumulate as Jaeden lands more and more of a hit with every one. There's a scrape on the Queen's cheek where one of those taloned nails landed. When it all seems to be coming to a head, not in Moira's favour, Jack bends down to grasp a metal rod from the Sovereign repairs, wraps a hand around it tight enough to whiten the knuckles.

She doesn't move. Not yet. But there's Irish blood in the red Australian dirt, and if worse comes to worse, there's no question there will be more of it. If. If it all goes to hell, it may not cease until Moira O'Deorain is dead or Talon intervenes, and if it goes that far. Well. She's closer. And it's an easy choice to make. 

The trajectory changes.

When Moira shifts forward in a blur of black smoke, that lithe frame solidifies at the end, cracking an elbow hard into Jaeden's jaw and causing the other to stagger, if but for a moment.

"Heh," is the only sound that escapes the Queen at that, the back of a hand drawn over a bloodied lip. But now that lithe form is close. Close enough to grab and hit. Time moves in slow motion when Jae's hand wraps in the front of Moira's shirt, hauling the geneticist closer as one of those toned shoulders shifts back. 

Red dust cakes the soles of her boots as Jack takes two swift steps forward with the metal in her hand, the other hand coming to curl around it as well. 

What she doesn't expect, is how that form dissipates to black mist and smoke in Jaeden's hands only to reappear twice as fast behind her. The lavender-tinted hand that curls around the back of the Queen's neck or the bite of those metallic nails into the skin. The way a spider-web of veins darkens to black beneath violet-tinged flesh or how Jaeden makes a choked, guttural noise as bruises start to bloom beneath a tanned complexion, spreading from the throat and toward the jaw and chest. 

That's when she realizes it was all a lead-up to the proverbial killing blow. Calculating. Waiting for the other to wear herself out to allow for a stellar, orchestrated finish. As Jae sinks slowly to a knee, the strength leeched from her bones as certainly as the colour has leeched from her face, hell in her eyes and hands shaking, it's already over.

Jack releases the metal pipe, letting it fall to the red dust and sheet metal with a loud 'clang'.

"What the fuck did you _do_?" Jaeden manages to bite out, trying to lever back up to her feet as something dark branches through her veins like poison. Insidious and dark. She doesn't succeed, and the taller woman's hand shifts to wrap around the Junker Queen's throat, the bruises slowly stemming rather than spreading but the implication of violence there nonetheless.

Moira's hair is mussed, coppery red and falling in her eyes. Stricken with gold around the ends in the amber light of the early afternoon. The words that fall from those lips are cold, shiver down her spine to house themselves in the part of her that whispers softly, echoing so many times that some or another has spoken _that woman is dangerous_. 

"The struggle for martial superiority is so _tedious_ ," wine-dark scarlet and vivid blue, the gaze behind coppery lashes remains fixed on the Junker Queen. A lip curls back, the teeth revealed sharp-white in the light, a sneer that pulls at freckled features that are yet bloodied above it. "The superiority of ideas; that is the coin of my realm. 

"Consider this a demonstration of which holds more value," it's as clear a warning as anything, painted in broad strokes of blue and purple beneath Jaeden's skin, near-black in the places that blood pools. "Recall it, the next you desire to act as a common schoolyard bully." 

"I believe this has reached its logical conclusion. Consider our score _settled_ ," Moira in a clipped, cold timbre that reminds her of ice over dark water as that lavender hand releases its hold. If you fell through it, you'd not like what you found on the other side. It warms a fraction when mismatched eyes meet hers, carries a little more lilt as it sounds out, "Jacqueline. Shall we?" 

Jack sweeps a look over the Scrapyard, the Talon team observing the situation with more ease now that it's settled. Jaeden seething as she rises to her feet. Her mother high in the stands with an odd expression, brother's sitting with the ramrod straight posture that tells her they've received a talking to. Likely the only reason they haven't already bolted down to harass them more. 

There's no discomfort when a warm hand comes to rest lightly at the nape of her neck as they walk, applies a faint pressure in reassurance. The air smells of sweat and red earth and a hint of copper as they make their way away from the stands. 

No one says a goddamn thing this time. 

_Good._


	27. i'm ready to explode, heart like a landmine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ** That Mad Max Life  
> ** Inappropriate reactions to Mortal Kombat  
> ** Horrible twins  
> ** Satan is a pony

There are mottled bruises along the sharp line of Moira's jaw, marking from near the chin up toward the corner in patterns that have already started to fade away by the time they reach the dimly-lit hallway above Wolf Wood's bar, a brisk walk in the all-too-hot Outback sun away. It touches that milky complexion with hints of plum at the darkest points, fades into softer hues of blue and muted jade before terminating in a jaundiced yellow around the edges.

It must be the nanites that have it on the mend so quickly, she reasons. Feels her fingertips twitch with the desire to touch it. Lightly. Only lightly. 

They passed the time on their way here in silence, the other's hand still resting at the nape of her neck. It's not uncomfortable. It does seem possessive. Jack isn't sure what she thinks about that. Her mind is split in several directions all at once. She and Jae had been on better footing, albeit briefly. Challenges hadn't rolled back out until the Scrapyard, when Moira had tended the burn to her hand. And that was what? Too close? Too personal. Too much a reminder of how she and Jaeden never were.

There's little doubt in her mind that she would have had it out with the Queen herself, had there not been a swift, hard turn towards the end. Back down to scrap metal and red earth, the taste of blood in her mouth and fresh bruises at the knuckles and at the ribs for the second time in so many weeks. But was it a challenge for her or for Moira. Both. Neither.

A smear of blood is evident beneath Moira's nose, smudged along the curve of the upper lip upon pale skin. Short, coppery red hair disheveled and falling into mismatched eyes, their heady scarlet and blue drifting toward her from behind coppery lashes, she imagines if the other had been a Junker. Would there even have been a contest, or would she have simply fallen into bed with her as soon as one of those long, slender fingers crooked in her direction. 

She knows the answer, feels it in her veins like Junkertown, all machine oil and burning hot sun as Moira's hand slips from the back of her neck, fingertips grazing her cheek lightly before they pull away. The knuckles of that hand are precisely firm, cold as marble, smudged over in a slowly fading patina of amaranth and dusky blue where they met resistance on another's armor and bone. She doesn't watch, but hears the deft maneuvering of a skeleton key into the lock in the door, the slow click as it unlatches. 

Jack recalls the way that Moira's upper lip curled back to reveal teeth in a slow sneer, revealing a line of sharp, white teeth. She recalls the absolute hell in those mismatched eyes. It wasn't hot, burnt up like flash in the pan. It isn't blackpowder. Moira's ire is a cold thing, it bites like an adder or the tip of a scalpel, and she imagines to feel it would be like the venom of a viper eating through your veins from the inside out. What lives behind those mismatched eyes, a wild thing well-hidden in the day, is not fully relinquished even still. 

She wants to see it. 

Mismatched eyes snap to hers when her fingertips draw slowly down the other's stomach, fingertips tracing beneath the edge of that black shirt to curl slowly around a leather belt. She pulls, draws back into the room a step at a time, kicking the door shut behind them with a boot.

She's shorter than Moira by a head, and that makes the next bit difficult, but with a hand curled around the taller woman's belt and the other wrapped in the front of a black shirt, she tips up and pulls down to bring them in closer proximity. The nip she places at the line of a sharp jaw isn't hard, but has to hurt, as tender as it is with still-fading bruises. 

To say that she feels decided satisfaction at the sharp inhalation that elicits would be an understatement. She feels satisfaction and several less honorable sensations all in rapid succession, and that doesn't diminish when the tables turn. It's the slow tilt of the other's head, the flick of scarlet and blue eyes over her. The not so slow backing up until her knees hit the side of the bed, Moira following after her in the hazy afternoon light. 

She has fresh bruises afterwards. Wherever fingertips held firmly, at the hips, along the slender curve of her wrists. She thinks they almost match now, the last shadows of bruising fading from Moira's knuckles as she traces a light touch over the back of them. There's a light kiss beneath her jaw, where she's fairly certain the dark crescent of a bite-mark is going to be permanently ingrained if she keeps seeing this woman. 

Jack makes a soft sound at that, threading her fingers through the other's and applying a faint pressure. Feels a squeeze back before the lanky frame behind her pulls her a bit nearer in response. It's comfortable, late in the afternoon in a Junkertown bed, their clothes scattered fucking everywhere, which would be more concerning if Barra wasn't with her brothers right now. 

This. 

This is what she thought Junkertown would be like.

Not the power plays with Jaeden. Not the omnics crawling up the walls. More so late afternoons with the red-orange gleam of the Outback sun through the windows after a few rounds of rough sex. Jack is an expert at making bad decisions. She's fairly certain that Moira is the best one she ever made. 

"I didn't know you could fight," she murmurs, brushing the pad of her thumb along the side of the other's. Then, with perhaps more honesty than is necessary, "I didn't think you could take Jaeden."

That earns her a soft nip to the sensitive skin behind and beneath the ear, a husky voice following afterwards, "I am nothing if not full of surprises."

"You're _something_ ," Jack concedes with a breathy laugh, a smile curling the corner of her mouth. "Where'd you learn?"

"I have four elder brothers, rabbit," comes the taller woman's response, low with a thread of amusement, and she can feel breath stir in her hair as Moira's cheek nestles there. "When they took to boxing lessons, I followed right along with them. It was a pleasant outlet for a youth who fit in little elsewhere."

"I can't imagine that," she admits with a contented sound, feeling quite pleased with how they're arranged, warmth at her back and a cool, lavender-tinted hand twined with hers. "You always seem so put together. Even in Junkertown, which is a feat."

A soft chuckle sounds at that, one that she feels in the breath in her hair and the rise and fall of the chest against her shoulders. Moira leans up on an elbow, scarlet and blue eyes vivid behind coppery lashes as they look down on her, a fingertip tracing above her ear to tuck a lock of currently quite untidy hair behind it. 

That voice is velvet and smoke as Moira confides, "I was a gangly child a head taller than any of my contemporaries, _a rúnsearc_. Interested more in science and pursuits of the mind than much else. Children lack in empathy when such an easy target presents itself. I did not have any companions outside my brothers for quite some time."

There's a little smirk then, before the taller woman confides, "The boxing came in handy when I was in my late teens, however. I was not oft troubled after the first attempt to do so."

"Contemporaries," Jack muses, dark eyes alight at the chosen words. She turns, a languid stretch made as she comes to rest on her back, and watches as Moira leans over her to retrieve a pack of cigarettes and a book of matches, "What happened?"

"A boy pushed me into a row of lockers after mathematics let out," Moira answers, uttering a quick, "Thank you," when Jack holds the pack of cigarettes so she can draw one out, and then the book of matches so that she can strike one. 

The cigarette finds its way between the other's lips, the matches and the rest of the carton tossed upon the nearby dresser once it's been lit. After a slow drag from it, the taller woman confides on the exhale, "I feinted and uppercut him in the jaw. He broke several teeth and I was almost sent to reform school. A narrow miss. But I was relatively unbothered afterwards."

Her arm slid around the taller woman, Jack brushes her fingertips up along a lean, freckled back, feeling the faintly raised stripes her fingernails left there not too long past and tracing along one lightly. Dark eyes holding the other's gaze, she asks, "How proud were your brothers?"

"Insufferably," Moira confides in a slow drawl, another drag taken from the cigarette before the other exhales in a plume of smoke. It coils, silver-white in the amber light through the window, drifting toward the ceiling with the faintest scent of mint to accompany it. " _Mo mháthair_ , as one may imagine, was far less impressed by the action. Though she defended me staunchly given the circumstance."

Jack holds out her fingertips, graciously accepting the cigarette when it's passed over, and steals a swift puff of her own. Watching the smoke roil in the air above her, her dark eyes soon shift towards mismatched as she traces the outline of a scratch a little further up, advising, "I bet you were right brilliant. Lucky your ass was in Dublin, though. I'm a sucker for a girl who can throw a punch, you'd have had a whole other problem."

"I _am_ brilliant," comes the low response, a warm kiss pressed to the corner of her jaw before long fingers pilfer back the cigarette. "It's good of you to recognize." 

Flicking a bit of ash into a tin cup in lieu of an ashtray, Moira confides amusedly, mismatched gaze settled to her dark, "You would have had competition, rabbit. Not any true competition, mind. But I can assure as unfond as Carbrey Burke was of his lost teeth, he was less fond of finding my hands up his girlfriend's cardigan not a few days later."

An incredulous laugh escapes her at that, one that glitters in her eyes and finds itself caught in the curled corners of her lips. With no small mirth with the question, Jack inquires despite her better judgment, "Did you steal his girl to teach him a lesson, you right shit?"

"Now, Jacqueline," Moira drawls out in a low lilt, and the devilish smirk that finds its way upon the other's countenance tells her plainly enough what the answer is. Another draw from the cigarette before it's ground out and the ashtray is slid back onto the dresser. One last exhalation of smoke, before there's a mouth warm beneath her jaw in a teasing kiss, and her slim fingers are tangling in fiery hair for the fourth time today. 

Moira smells of burnt amber, bergamot, and cigarette smoke against the curve of her throat, lips brushing there as the taller woman confides, "Stole presumes that she came to me unwillingly. I can _assure_ you that this was not the case."

Another mark finds its way to coppery skin, then another. At a sharp inhalation when a line of teeth touch a sensitive spot near the hollow of her throat, the taller woman emits a low chuckle, brushing a kiss there in its stead. 

Glancing up at her through coppery lashes, one blue eye and the other scarlet are stark in their difference as Moira asks in a voice already pleasantly husky, from the action or the cigarette smoke anyone's guess, "One would think you might empathize. I think you like when I do that a little too much, don't you, rabbit?"

"God," Jack breathes out slowly, a fluid breath that takes longer than it should as her arm slips to drape around Moira's neck. Comfortable as she looks at the lanky frame propped on an elbow over her. "You're a fucking menace, you know that?"

At the amused and _entirely_ smug look is all she receives in return, the fingertips of her free hand rising to touch the side of her throat lightly as she asks, "You realize we're having supper with _my family_ , right?"

"Mm," is the only immediate response, the beat of a chuckle heard as Moira's hand curls around her wrist to draw it down, that cooler hand taking its place to cause a shiver at the sharp difference in temperature.

It takes her a moment to place that everywhere those icy fingertips are tracing demarcates a mark that Moira has left behind for her, at least until they reach the light bite that was placed near the hollow of her throat. _Jesus_.

"I suppose you could cover them, but that seems a pity," Moira's voice isn't any _less_ smug, a low current like whiskey and smoke near her ear. "I did work particularly hard on them, after all."

"Oh, my bad," Jack snorts out softly, unable to mask the smile that curls the corner of her lips. he starts to lift her hand toward her neck once more, only to watch as Moira wraps a hand around her wrist once more to prevent it. "You know not all of us have _nanites_ to get rid of our love bites for us."

The little chuckle that sounds at that is as delightful as it is maddening, and when Moira ducks nearer once more, Jack tightens her hold in the other's hair to prevent another mark being left, drawing the taller woman up short with a mischievous smile. 

"An answer for an answer then, rabbit," Moira confides then, waiting until the hold in her hair has relinquished someone to duck down and place a warm kiss to coppery skin regardless. There's a distinct pause as the other draws back up, freckled features bearing what she thinks must be the _cockiest_ look she's ever seen in her life before the question comes, "Objectively speaking, would you say I'm the most thorough lover you've taken?"

Dark eyes blink with excruciating slowness at that, a loud laugh escaping her. Jack can feel heat starting to creep up her neck, lingering at her cheekbones and decidedly warmly at the apex of her ears, opting to intone an incredulous, "Oh my god."

A low, pleased sound emanates from the taller woman at that, one that Jack can feel the reverberations of as Moira's mismatched eyes sweep over her with nothing short of vast satisfaction at the reaction, as if it were a hypothesis proven. A thumb traces the inside of her captured wrist in a slow circle as that devil's voice drawls out, "You make a fair point, I suppose. You do make a habit of saying that _often_ when we keep company."

There's a wicked mirth in those mismatched eyes now, Moira adding idly, "Though shall we agre that _saying_ may not be the best descriptor?"

_God, you're so fucking smug._ It's all that Jack can think as she takes in those angular features, the self-pleased tilt to the corner of the other's lips, the absolute confidence in scarlet and blue eyes. She can't deny that she likes it, and she doesn't really want to think about how red her face is right now. If it's warmth is any indication, the answer is obvious.

"You think you could look any more smug?" Jack asks with amusement, a fingertip tucking beneath Moira's chin to tilt those features up ever-so-slightly. She jumps suddenly at the brushing of a cold knuckle to the warm skin near her navel in response, realizing that the other has relinquished the hold on her wrist with a bit of a start as that cool hand comes to rest at her hip instead. 

"Perhaps," comes a pleasantly lilting response, the taller woman somehow succeeding in accomplishing exactly that as that infuriating smirk curls a little further, gaze no less bold as it flicks over her. Lightly, albeit with decided satisfaction, the geneticist observes, "Unfortunately, that counts as your answer, Jacqueline. Which I believe makes it my turn again."

Unabashed cheating. Of course.

Mismatched eyes draw back up to hers as Moira confides in a low lilt, "You're bad at this, rabbit."

"You realize it's not a _winning game_ , O'Deorain?" Jack affirms with a pleased note to her voice in turn, its smoothness marked with laughter at the edges as that freckled countenance looks down on her, the mood more than a little infectious. "Besides which, you cheat _horribly_."

"Easily said when you are _decidedly_ not the one winning," comes the response, murmured near her jaw as the taller woman shifts, and a long, lean thigh comes to rest between her own, Moira's weight a comfortable pressure above her. "What is your favorite thing that I-"

There's a distinct pause there, followed by a husky observation of, "Oh _really_ , rabbit?"

"What?" Jack answers back almost instinctually, an incredulous sound escaping her before mismatched eyes fall pointedly to her hand, where she's been tracing her fingertips beneath the line of her jaw. She turns an even more distinct shade of red at that, countering simply, "Shut up."

They both know what that's about, which is confirmed when Moira chuckles _again_ , infuriatingly, and slips a cool hand around her throat, gooseflesh breaking out over her arms from the coolness of the other's touch. It involves being held against a shower wall in the basement of the genetics building.

Moira confides with a low, husky hum near her ear, "That was some of my finer work. Would you care to revisit it?"

Jack licks her lips slowly as if that would make them feel less dry, pointing out pragmatically, "We're going to be late for supper."

"And?" comes a pleasantly low response.

\---

They're late for dinner. 

Fantastically later than she said that they would be down to help make it. 

She'd told Kamaka and her mother that they would be down on the flats around four for pick-up. It's almost six by the time she disembarks the lifts, and her brother looks bored as sin sprawled atop the hood of the modified land rover in the early evening, fiddling with a bit of omnic tech and occasionally tossing it up into the air only to catch it again. 

It's funny. She's dressed like she's going home, something she wouldn't wear on the posh streets of Oasis but is more comfortable than it isn't. Red drab fatigues cut along the upper thigh into shorts in a pinch. A low-slung belt onto which a hammered flat square of bullet casing has been affixed for every mecha win. Military boots scuffed and coat in red dust. Like everything, really. 

Moira had had _opinions_ about the shirt, and she can still hear _if you can call it that_ in a low lilt near her ear. It's functional, even if it is missing a sleeve. The other one falls to the elbow, and a wide rent near the neck has been patched with a few straps of leather to keep it on. It cuts off along the midriff, which she'd think may have been the crux of the problem, if she didn't have a fresh fucking love bite near the hip from where the other woman _put her fucking mouth_ after she pulled it on. It matches the ones scattered along the side of her neck, she supposes.

It's really not all that surprising that they were late, she imagines. Moira's always into her looking a mess and she absolutely cannot be trusted around this woman in a suit. Anyway. The important part is that a wide swathe of Junkertown red marks the back, between the shoulders, and generally that's enough to dissuade anyone from shooting you in the fucking back out on the flats. 

Rebreather tied to her belt: _Check._  
Goggles: _Tied around her upper arm in case._  
Leather band with several rifle rounds tied to it: _Also check._

She combs her fingers through her hair as they walk over toward the rover, pulling it back into a messy knot at the base of her skull, and kicks the tire to get his attention, only meeting his gaze long enough to see his dark eyes drift toward the side of her neck in pointed fashion before she asserts, "Not a goddamn word."

When he arches a brow, a raspy chuckle sounding from him, Jack opts instead to introduce with a jerk of her thumb over her shoulder, "This is Moira. O'Deorain."

With a glance back toward the other woman, looking tall and somehow immaculately composed even on the fucking flats of Junkertown, she advises, "Babe, this is my brother Kamaka. Second oldest. You don't have to remember that. He's pretty forgettable."

There's a wink at Kamaka at that, and he playfully shoves her as he hops down off the rover, reaching out a hand as if to shake Moira's. 

"Charmed," Moira intones in a low, pleasant lilt in the fading light over the Outback scrub. The hand she extends to shake his is softly tinted with lavender, perhaps a touch more so at the knuckles and the nailbeds, where it takes on a dusky hint of violet-blue. The talons are intimidating. She knows that much, sharp at the edges and matched with the branching metal of the implants that wind up that forearm. 

Jack watches them as they watch each other for a moment, Kamaka's eyes flicking to the limb and then up toward angular, freckled features, before he seems to accept the challenge posed to him with more than a little respect for it, and grasps Moira's hand to shake it firmly.

"How's it?" Kamaka returns, a rhetorical question in the smoke over metal rasp of his timbre, releasing the geneticist's hand as a cheeky smile touches his features. "Only heard good things about you, yeah?"

His dark gaze flicks pointedly towards Jack, who is throwing their luggage into the back of the rover and strapping it down for the ride, "Guess now I know _why_. Two hours, Jack? I don't care how hot shit she is in the arena, Mom's going to have your _hide_."

With a cheeky wink toward Moira, which elicits a faint smirk, if a slight tinge of colour at the cheekbones, he adds, "Whatever's fuckin' left of it, I guess."

She ignores his low whistle, slaps his hand when he circles around the rover to flick the mark near her belt, and then makes her way toward the hood of the modded vehicle to double check the fluids, belts, and gears before shutting it once more. 

"I know how to prep a rover, Jack," her brother remarks with a chuckle, confiding to Moira soon after, "One time. When I was twelve. Hasn't let me forget it."

"Because we had to walk home three days in the scrub, Kamaka," Jack shoots back as she clambers into the back of the rover, making room for Moira beside her. A fiery crown of hair almost brushes the bars of the roll cage overhead, long legs cramped against the front seat as that lanky frame settles in. "We had to eat a fucking turtle and you _cried_ because _turtles are our friends_."

He's laughing now, the dark ink around his eyes and the slope of his nose pulling with the action. It makes him look more like a crow. She leans over the front seat to pinch his cheek. 

Moira looks vaguely amused as she buckles in, which. Wise call. It's a rough ride out to the flats, and Kamaka drives like a fucking maniac.

If they made an incongruous pair in Oasis, she imagines, lab coats and leather jackets, this is all the more stark. Because of course Moira fucking O'Deorain would make sure she's impeccably dressed to go to supper with Jack's family _in Junkertown_. 

Moira is dressed like she's meeting _someone else's family_ , and god if she doesn't know how to make an impression.

It's a suit. Of course it's a suit. It's a slate grey suit with a breezy white dress shirt beneath it, unbuttoned just enough that she can see the freckles at the other's collarbone and the fine gold chain of a necklace slung about a slender neck. The pendant of it is a small amber stone with a fossilized firefly inside it, and disappears beneath the buttoned portion of the shirt.

She knows because she asked after _helping_ to straighten the buttons of that shirt the second time they failed to leave. They have a problem, she's decided. One that she's sure they could work out of their systems with a few more uninterrupted days. Probably.

There's a gold watch around the other's slender wrist, and it gleams in the light when a long arm drapes around her shoulders after Moira has buckled. Antique, given the ticking hands on the clock face, and the Junker part of her is already itching to take it apart just to see if she could put it back together again. The jacket only reaches to the elbows, where the cuffs of that white shirt is pinned with cufflinks set with amber stone.

Cufflinks in Junkertown. 

She loves this woman.

They're absolutely going to get robbed in the street if Moira keeps it up. It's fucking criminal. If anyone's brave enough, she guesses, after what all happened in the Scrapyard earlier today.

It might be worth it if she gets to watch the taller woman scrap it out with someone else, bruised knuckles and red earth on that suit. _Heel_ , she thinks to herself, focusing instead on the way her brother, unbuckled, has hopped into the front of the rover and pressed the pedal down to the floor, rocketing them across the desert scrub at entirely unsafe speed. 

Some things never change. 

The endless scrubland sprawls out before them, sunlight shimmering off the red stone at the base of the cliffs as plumes of dust kick up in their wake, glittering behind them. The sky is a dusky blue without so much as a cloud in sight, the sliver of the moon evident on the horizon despite the sun still sinking in a warm, orange-red glow in the distance. She's lost in the view. In the wind whipping by them and the engines rumbling far too loud to hear anything else. 

She's lost in the way she looks over and sees the crack of a smile on those angular, freckled features, and knows that whether it's because she's exhilarated or the other is, it's just _good_.

It takes twenty minutes to reach the halfway mark, between the stacked stones and the white-painted gear on the cliffs to the right. They head down into the gulch and up the other side, the rover roaring over the rock and dirt, before a bullet ricochets off the side of it, denting the already pockmarked and scraped paint. 

This is why she carries rifle rounds on the flats.

"Scavvers," Kamaka yells above the wind, pounding the seat beside him even as Jack's hands fall to her seat-buckle, snapping it open to lean up over the roll cage. She can see the other rovers as they rip up over the ravine, hot on their tail and weaving through the thick plumes of dust in their wake. 

Welcome to the fucking Junkertown flats.

It's not surprising. It shouldn't be, she supposes. Of course there would be fucking vultures out after an omnic raid, ready to make an easy living picking off what they could as folk head in and out of 'town to see their families, check on the outlying farms. Good source of scrap and materials. Good source of collateral depending who's in the rover. They're getting bold if they're gunning for one with Queensguard colours.

Jaeden is going to have a shitfit once the 'guard is back on patrol, she muses, leaning over the front seat to catch up Kamaka's rifle. It's a near mirror-image of the one their mother uses, if with less notches carved into the wood. His kill count isn't as high. Her mother would run out of rifles if she marked every one. 

Jack ratchets back the slide as she shifts her position in the moving rover, carefully, as every rock and rise jostles the vehicle dangerously as they rattle across the scrub. One boot planted to Moira's side on the backseat, and the other near the top of it, she braces the small of her back against the front seat as the butt of the rifle comes to rest at the crux of her shoulder.

She smells gun oil and arid earth as she picks out one of the rovers crossing behind them, all but hidden in the wide swathe of dust veiling the air. Wasteland tan and black marks the scavvers hooting and hollering in the vehicle, the four black stripes painted over their faces denoting the gang they run with. Devil's Gulch. Fucking predictable.

Assholes.

A hand curls around her calf to steady her, the other finding purchase around her belt as they hit a rock and it jostles them up into the air a bit, presumably to ensure that she doesn't pitch over the back. Thank god for this fucking woman. She won't pitch over. Not unless Kamaka starts paying more attention to the firefight than the road as a few shots pepper back at them. None of them hit, but she hears the hum of one altogether too close. 

This has to be more excitement than most people experience on the way to visit someone's parents, but she supposes that if they can survive a Talon prison and taking down a fucking Stonefish at the top of the cliffs, this should be a piece of cake. Right? Right. She tries not to overthink it as she sights up again. 

"Hard right!" Kamaka bellows from the front seat, and she barely has time to catch the side of the roll cage with one subtly calloused hand before they veer around a boulder, going up on two wheels for a moment. An unpleasant lurch marks the moment the rover slams back down to the earth. 

When a bullet scatters across the boulder nearby, chips of stone and metal scattering over the side of the rover as Kamaka opens it up again, pushing the needle toward the red, the rifle discharges with a deafening 'crack' that misses the driver. The passenger isn't as lucky, however, a puff of red mist mixing with the red dust as his head splits open to reveal the bone and brain underneath, staining the back of his seat a gory crimson. 

She watches him loll over into the driver's lap and takes another shot, hitting the other scavver in the shoulder this time. Ratcheting back the slide to expel the shells, she pulls two more from the band at her wrist and loads them with decided trouble given the roughness of what isn't really a road. Not technically. 

Jack has done this before. More times than she'd care to admit. And while she prefers the relative safety of her now-destroyed mecha to a fucking modded rover, this'll do in a pinch. At least he armored the sides of the fucking thing. And God forbid any of the Vargas children _not_ know how to shoot half-decent by the tender age of ten, anyways. 

She lucks out on the third shot when it rips open the front tire, flipping the pursuit vehicle end over end to shatter into the base of the cliffs, the ear-shattering scream of metal on rock echoing well over the scrubland as black smoke starts to billow from the wreckage. Aren't going to find any survivors there. 

It doesn't stop one of the remaining two from veering off to check, but the other cuts in a wider circle, full throttle as it tries to pull up alongside of them. When Kamaka spins the steering wheel left, she almost slams into a support bar on the roll cage, just barely caught by firm physician's hands. Thank fucking god that Moira buckled or they'd both be rolling over the scrubland in pieces right now. 

She flicks a brief, thankful look toward mismatched eyes before shouting toward the front seat, "A little fucking warning?"

"I'm fucking trying," is all Kamaka has time to growl back before he has to pump the brakes, munitions fire rattling along the side of the rover. 

"I'm going to fucking kill you," Jack barks back from her position. 

"Yeah, well it'll be a right fucking contest to see who does first, won't it?" her brother shouts back. 

She braces more firmly between the seats, lifting the rifle once more. One shot glances over the hood of the rover gaining on them and at least six rattle back, one nicking the bars directly beside her before Moira has seemingly had enough and yanks her back down. She's fit to light into the taller woman for it before she realizes that the rifle is empty, and instead focuses on reloading it from half in the geneticist's lap, a knee pressed into the back seat. 

Reload. Reload, dropping no less than three bullets into the bottom of the rover as they rattle over the stony ground toward the homestead in the distance. 

It isn't her bullet that returns toward the Gulch scavvers as they veer around the base of the cliffs toward the little circle of tin trailers. Toward the fenced-in brumby who looks completely bomb-proof, unbothered, and the two little boys playing with a dingo near the garage.

No. The shot that punches directly through a painfully blue eye to leave nothing but a gory, fist-sized hole in the skull isn't hers. Nor is the second round that takes the engine dead-on, the mechanism seizing as it flips the rover end over end in a sudden stop, ragdolling the remaining scavvers into the solar fence well before they reach the Vargas homestead. 

Those belong to her mother, smoking on the back porch as Kamaka swings around in a wide circle to take them down to speed. 

Jack snaps the safety on the rifle as they do, remaining exactly where she is, dark eyes meeting scarlet and blue and holding there as she exhales in a slow, steady breath. Moira doesn't say anything above the dimming roar of the engine and the wind, but the look on her face says: _Really, Jacqueline?_

_Really, babe,_ is what she wants to answer.

\--- 

Once they've disembarked the rover, she leaves the rifle propped in the front seat. Leaves it to Kamaka, who waits only just until their luggage has been removed before rumbling off to check for survivors, and presumably finish off or interrogate anyone who may have lived through either wreck. She doubts that'll be anyone, but you can never be too careful this close to home. 

"That was..." Moira starts to speak, once the taller woman has unfolded from the back of the makeshift vehicle, looking altogether relieved to have two feet on the ground, regardless of the red dust clinging to polished leather shoes. "Ill-advised, at best. You have done so before?"

Jack busies herself with straightening the other's shirt, answering with a soft snort, "I'm a Junker, babe. I've done worse than that _this week_." 

Reaching up carefully and having to rise to her toes to do so, she combs her trembling fingertips through fiery-red hair to tidy it from the wind that whipped through it on their breakneck trip here, then straightens the collar of a white shirt. She leaves a quick kiss at the curve of Moira's lips before settling back flat on her feet, reminding in a light cadence, "Stonefish, remember?"

"I _remember_ ," comes a clipped response, a little more terse than she was expecting, its low lilt touched with a certain vexation that she can't place for a moment. At least not until firm hands start to inspect for damage, a quick once over to make sure none of the bullets nor chips of them hit. That's kind of sweet, really. 

She doesn't catch all of the murmuring, but most of it seems to be, thick with that Dubliner accent, of the nature of _bloody reckless_.

Moira has only just caught her by the chin, a clinical sweep of her countenance completed and a surprisingly gentle kiss bestowed, before two small forms all but collide with them, smaller hands tugging at a slate grey suit jacket and Jack's fatigues as a clamor of voices arise. 

Meeting her gaze pointedly and asserting all too smoothly, "We shall conclude this discussion at a more practical date, Jacqueline," Moira diverts her gaze toward the twins as they start a ruckus. 

"Ew," Tama announces where he is, pulling a face presumably at the kiss as he asks, "Is she your girlfriend, Jack? Jack! Jaaaack."

"Do you want to see our brumby?" Timoti rattles off without a second's pause, both of his hands finding Moira's lavender-tinted one as he observes. "Your hand's cold. Why do you have claws? Why's it purple?"

Their coppery skin streaked in red dust and goggles perched atop their heads, the boys look every bit as Junker as anyone, scarves around their necks in case of a sandstorm and most of their clothes comprised of red drab salvaged from some military base or another. Tama is wearing a shirt she sent him in the post. _Headphones frog_ , he calls it. It's DJ Lucio. They don't look all that different than she imagines she did at that age. 

"You ever think about having kids?" Jack jokes in as dry a fashion as possible, a mischievous smile curling over her features as those mismatched eyes snap to hers, sharp. 

Moira's absolutely going to kill her later. 

"What?" is the only response, the words just as sharp and touched with more than a little shock at the question.

At a particularly hard yank at her fatigues, Jack looks down with an, "Oh my god, what?"

Pulling first one of the boys and then the other back by their shirts, she asks, "Could you not be rude for five seconds? Do you put your hands on someone without asking them?"

"Sometimes," Tama observes dubiously.

"No," Timothi laments. 

"This is - in fact - my girlfriend," Jack confides to the twins as she kneels down between them, an arm wrapped around each one in turn to keep them from pawing any further at the taller woman for at least a few minutes. "Her name is Moira. She's right brilliant. Now say hello without being little bastards about it, yeah?" 

"Hi," Tama pipes up with a little wave, a cheeky smile on his features.

"What's on your hand? Is it metal? Why's it purp-" Timoti ignores her to ask, reaching out as if to grasp it again, and causing Jack to have to adjust her arm to keep ahold of him. She shakes him a little. Not hard. A little jostle really. It makes him laugh and he says, "Hello," in between giggles. 

"Charmed to make your acquaintance," Moira intones for the second time today.

"This is Timoti, and that's Tama," Jack introduces them, the twins taking a moment to protest which of them is which before cheekily conceding to her assessment. 

"She talks funny, why does she-" 

"Jack, why is her hand-"

"What's an acquainta-"

Jack's eyes flutter closed for a moment, a little laugh escaping her before she warns, "I'm going to dump you both in the brumby trough in about three seconds if you don't knock it off. Go wash up for dinner. You can be pests later."

Giving the boys a playful shove toward the tin trailer, she rises to her feet, having to make as if she may chase them there when they linger, only to send them screaming up the stairs and into the house. 

Snaking her arms around Moira's waist then, beneath the jacket but above the shirt, Jack looks up at the taller woman to ask, "I know this is a lot. You alright?" The corner of her lips curls faintly as she asks softly, "Regretting everything?"

There's a little scoff out of Moira at that, mismatched eyes drifting from the retreating children, to where their hands had been on her jacket, to her lavender-tinted wrist, then back to Jack. Their colour is no less vivid any time, always strikes as her as discordant and beautiful all in the same. 

When warm fingertips catch her chin, it isn't long before a light kiss is brushed to her lips, the taller woman confiding in a low, surprisingly pleasant lilt, "Not everything."

"You are altogether too charming for your own good, you know that?" Jack murmurs back at that, searching that scarlet and blue gaze a moment further, her thumbs brushing lightly along the other's sides as her hands come to rest above slim hips.

She can hear small feet hitting the stairs already. They can't _possibly_ have washed up proper in that amount of time. Little bastards. 

There's another kiss, lighter as it finds the scar at the apex of her lip, and her dark lashes flutter at that, gaze warm as it seeks out mismatched eyes soon after. The words are so low she almost misses them, breathed quietly there, "You can make it up to me later."

A soft laugh escapes her at that, the smile that curves over her features not fading, even when Tama gripes loudly, "Gross. Stop kissing. It's gross."

"Yeah, it's gross," Timoti adds in confirmation. He heaves a loud groan as Jack tilts up as if she might kiss the other, yanking at her arm as he complains, "Jack stop!"

She realizes that one of them is touching Moira again when that lanky frame stiffens suddenly, Tama's voice rising with, "You want to see our brumby? His name is Satan."

It's a concession that she doesn't wholly understand nor expect, but the faint flicker of a smile curls the corner of Moira's lips as those mismatched eyes meet hers, and she hears the taller woman confide in a low lilt to the boys, "I would be delighted. Will you be making the introductions...Timoti?"

"I'm Timoti. That's Tama."

"No I'm Timoti."

She mouths _it bites_ in warning, watching with a faint incredulity as Moira O'Deorain, Minister of Genetics in Oasis, Inner Council member of Talon, allows herself to be led away nearer to the fence with a little boy on each arm to look at what at best approximates a feral Outback pony. 

A soft, "Huh," escapes her at that, her arms folding across her chest as she leans a shoulder against the nearby trailer. 

Not exactly what she expected.

Not bad by far.


	28. all you are is harmless smoke, casting shadows on the floor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ** non-canon timelines/occurrences  
> ** why is Jack's mom Junker Ana? idk???  
> ** Jack's mom ghost-written by rawrkie, plotter of terrible ideas that are 10/10  
> ** annoying little brother things  
> ** shameless fluff

This is an absolute disaster. Jack probably should have recognized that well before she arrived in Junkertown, and certainly well before she decided that it would be a brilliant idea to accept her mother's invitation for Moira O'Deorain to join them down on the flats for dinner. She can hear the twins rattling off questions in the distance, somewhere in the vicinity of the fence, and the low, pleasantly lilting timbre that responds to them with more patience than she imagined it may have. More patience than it often has for her when she's feeling pesty.

And yet, Jacqueline Vargas cannot escape the porch, where she has been cornered by five feet and five inches of her ex-paramilitary, ex-Liberation Front mother, still dressed in red drab fatigues and chain-smoking clove cigarettes like it didn't go out of style like a hundred years ago. 

"You think it's acceptable to show up two hours late? You were due at sixteen hundred, it's half past eighteen," Waimarie addresses without hesitation. There's a shrewd look at her attire before a fingertip flicks her side and then gestures toward her neck, "You could have at least covered _this_ up. I raised you better than this."

There's something about her mother that always puts her immediately on the defensive, slipping toward the offensive with the speed of a stone dropped from the Junkertown fortifications, rocketing down to shatter on the flats.

"I lost track of the time," Jack hedges, her arms coming to cross her chest as she leans back against the railing. "It wasn't intentional." She snorts a little at the assessment, countering more firmly than she feels the sentiment, "I'm not embarrassed and I was out of concealer."

"Try a _shirt_ ," Waimarie retorts, flicking the edge of her shirt next and making her jump. 

"It's hot as fuck outside, Mom," she asserts next, "If I have to choose between roasting alive and having people know that I - God forbid - got a little handsy with my girl, it's not that difficult a decision. Kamaka's showed up to dinner looking worse. You didn't scold him."

"Kamaka contributes to this household," her mother rounds with displeasure, not giving her an instant to think about a further retort before he asserts, "He does not show up to dinner two hours late, half-dressed, with his posh terrorist and expect his mother to be _pleased_ with the news. He also does not _waste ammunition_ when he shoots scavvers on the flats."

That makes her straighten, and she can feel the anger of her response like a hot ember beneath her tongue, wicking smoke through her teeth. So that's it. Waste of ammunition. Yeah. More like, how dare you run off to Oasis, part three. _Kamaka contributes to this household_. He does. In scrap, in repairs to faulty equipment. All of her brothers contribute in their own way.

To pretend that she isn't contributing isn't an old argument, but it is a surefire way to get under her skin in about two seconds flat. 

The real accusation isn't _you don't contribute_. It's _you moved away from Junkertown_ for an opportunity. There's almost nothing that she doesn't love about Junkertown. But Junkertown doesn't fucking pay for Nik to go to uni and it didn't pay for Pao's surgery, and it sure as fuck isn't paying for the radiation pills and repair costs that she's been pouring into the Vargas household since she's been in Oasis. 

On the scale of points of contention between them, her moving and the fact that she's funneling money into the household and to her brothers is high on the list. Because it wounds her mother's pride, maybe? Because _rub some dirt in it_ doesn't fix everything, just like it doesn't fix the faulty solar panels or the broken rover or feed the fucking brumby.

"Kamaka contributes to this household," is all she repeats, the words strained through clenched teeth as she straightens, no longer leaning against the railing. "And I don't?"

She wishes her fucking Dad was here. Not off at uni visiting Nik. She paid for those tickets, too. Fuck. _It is not a contest, Jack. It's not a contest, and if it was, you were never going to win it_. Jack forces herself to exhale slowly, wishes her father would apparate somewhere to the left of her. Because Nico Vargas, solar engineer, is the tempering force around which their household stabilizes on its axis. The kind turn and awful joke that softens her mother's harsh words. 

There's screaming in the vicinity of the fence, and she knows without looking what that's about. Either the brumby has bitten one of the boys again or...no, it's the second one, she determines when there's another shriek. The recognition that the boys are daring each other to touch the solar fence again, only to holler every time it shocks them. Sometimes when Jamie's been over, he joins them doing that. She can't fucking fathom why. Maybe that's how his brain got a little scattered in the first place.

Then again, she finds Jamie more endearing than either of the twins on most given days.

"It's always _money_ with you, Ngaire," the words are more cutting than she anticipated them being, accompanied by an exhalation of smoke before her mother takes another puff from the cigarette. "You can't eat money and you can't shoot money out of a rifle and it isn't as important as your _pride_."

It's not her proudest moment, but the amount of self-restraint that goes into not decking her mother when Waimarie Vargas grabs her by the chin and shakes lightly is _phenomenal_ and she only just manages not to.

"Courting greatness does not make you great. What you do with you does. I want you to rest on _your own laurels_. Cut your own path, Ngaire," the words smell like the clove smoke that's roiling between them, dark eyes not far from her own. "Not the path some posh Oasis Minister makes for you."

"Are you _fucking kidding me_?" the words snap themselves out of her mouth far too quickly and far too loudly, escape before she can halt them, and there's little doubt that they're about to get into it now if her mother's expression is any indication. 

She's about to say something _far worse_ when a cool hand comes to rest along the curve of her shoulder, applying a faint, reassuring pressure. Jack hadn't even realized that Moira had come up near the porch, but she can feel the metal tips of the other's nails through her shirt, the slow half-circle a thumb brushes on the back of her shoulder.

Moira's timbre is low and lilting, an undeniably pleasant sound that reminds her of dark water, a river when the cold currents are so deep you can't touch the stones at the bottom, "Ah. You must be Mrs. Vargas."

The taller woman is close now, close enough that she can feel warmth from the proximity. The other hand, the one devoid of lavender tint and taloned nails, reaches around her in polite introduction as Moira greets, "Moira O'Deorain. It's a pleasure to meet you formally. You have a lovely home and a charming family."

Her mother's dark eyes shift up, up, up and a bit behind her, and she's certain that they're scanning freckled features with a hawk-like intensity before a weathered hand comes to shake Moira's slender one quite firmly.

"Please, Marie will do," comes a gruff response, the flick of dark eyes in her direction letting her know that this conversation is _far from over_ even given this temporary cessation. "Glad that you could make it down to the flats, and nice work with Cooper earlier. Haven't seen that girl humble in a long time."

It's funny. Only her mother is allowed to call her mother _Marie_. She's not sure what she thinks about that. 

There's a long, somewhat appraising look over Moira before her mother observes around a clove cigarette, "Supper outside may be in our best interests. I'm not sure you will be able to stand up in the trailer, dear. Ngaire didn't mention that you were so tall."

Waimarie pauses for a moment, scrutinizing the geneticist a moment further before stating frankly, "Or handsome. I've never been much of one for suits, but I think the style has gone up in my estimate."

Jack can do little else but blink with excruciating slowness when her mother reaches out and then over her shoulder, calloused fingertips catching the gold chain around the throat of the woman behind her to inspect the pendant proper.

Her mother's New Zealander accent has become all the more prevalent with the inquiry, "What is this? It is lovely."

"Ah. It is a firefly encased in amber. A gift from a... former colleague," Moira responds, a charming smile touching freckled features that never quite reaches the eyes as the pendant is released. Something about the way that it's said leaves little doubt in Jack's mind that it wasn't so much a colleague.

"Let me rally the boys and we'll set up out here," her mother intones then, a pleasant enough smile offered before the shorter woman heads into the trailer, wafting clove-scented smoke. A shout follows soon after, one that resonates through the house and well out onto the porch, "Paora! Do something productive and help me carry supper outside!"

Jack doesn't let go of the breath that she's holding until the door has been closed for almost a minute, at which she feels a warm kiss pressed to her cheek, dark lashes fluttering with the action and dark eyes soon shifting in the taller woman's direction. 

"That well already, rabbit?" it's a brief question, but tells her well enough that Moira is aware of the tension between her and her mother at the moment. 

Her nose wrinkling at the question, Jack catches the pendant between her fingertips, inspecting the warmly-coloured stone for a moment before tucking it carefully back beneath Moira's shirt. Slipping her arms around a slim waist afterwards, warm between the jacket and the ivory fabric, she observes, "Yeah. About that well. We've already covered being late, running off, and sleeping your way to the top, so...only up from here, I guess."

She snorts softly, though her expression softens a little when a long arm drapes around her shoulders, looking up toward sculpted features as she adds, "Nothing I won't survive. Besides, are you _charming_ my mother? Because _whatever the fuck_ that was, it's sure as shit never happened before."

"Shall I tell her that you tend to be on the bottom, then? Set the record straight in your honor?" there's an altogether too smug expression at the jest, mismatched eyes vivid as they settle to her own night-dark. "Perhaps charmed is simply an effect that I have on people."

A dusting of freckles all the more prevalent on pale features as the sun borders lower on the horizon, Moira ducks a bit nearer to confide near her ear, "It would take further study to be certain, don't you think?"

"You are _fucking impossible_ ," Jack laughs in response, unable to mask the smile that cuts across her coppery features nonetheless. At a light nip to her ear, she confirms further, "You can save that for later. I'm right fond of that bit."

"I am well aware of that, rabbit," Moira clarifies with a low chuckle, the infuriating smirk on those features curling a little further as the other drawls out, "It is the reason we were late, after all."

"Bullshit," Jack protests with no small amount of mirth, grinning as she holds the other's gaze. "That was only half my fault." Another soft snort escapes her as she flicks a look down the taller woman and then back up, "Though, would it kill you to look less fit in a suit? It's _problematic_."

"Problematic? Is it now?" comes the query in a low lilt, a perfect brow arched as Moira's mismatched gaze remains on hers.

With a cheeky curl to the corner of her lips, Jack smooths the front of that ivory-white shirt and confides, "Because as nice as it looks, it looks better _off_."

A husky chuckle is her reward for the comment, the taller woman ducking in closer with _that smirk_ , likely to say something truly dreadful. Just shy of it, a bemused look crosses those angular features and Moira straightens of a sudden, looking over one shoulder. 

She finds out why a few seconds later when something strikes off her side, hitting the coppery skin solidly beneath the terminus of her shirt. Something that feels suspiciously like a small stone, confirmed when she looks first down toward the round rock that's landed on the porch, then up toward the twins in the yard with a handful of pebbles.

Her mouth sets into a thin line for a second, and she turns back toward Moira to tilt up, pressing a light kiss to the curve of the other's mouth before she observes, "Give me two seconds, babe."

Jack climbs over the railing with a swiftness, and when her boots hit the ground, the boys scatter in different directions. Screaming. Their pebbles forgotten. She takes off after the nearest one, around the tin trailer and behind the garage to catch him by the back of the shirt and hoist him up over her shoulder.

"Jack noooo! Jack. Pleeeease. Not the brumby trough, pleeeease," comes from Tama as he laments his life choices.

She is, in fact, on her way toward the fence and the trough in question when she spots Timoti, who has cunningly doubled back to harangue Moira with a barrage of rapid-fire questions from beneath the front steps, peering up through the bottom of the porch at the taller woman as he asks them. 

"Can you disappear?"

"In a manner of speaking."

"How?"

"I genetically modified my person to allow the cellular structure to disperse and coalesce."

"Can you do it now?"

"I could if I wished to."

"What's coalesce?"

"To come back together."

"Will you disappear now?"

"I think not."

"Why?"

"Because I have no need to do so."

"If I throw another rock will you do it?"

"No."

"Why?"

Silence.

"What about now?"

Silence.

"Are you a superhero?"

There's a low, pleasant chuckle at that, before Moira asserts, "Hardly."

Mismatched eyes flick up toward her as she reaches the bottom of the steps, kicking the lowest one to catch his attention as she announces, "I know you're under there, you little shit. Get in the house and wash your hands before supper. And don't give me that shit you already washed them. I know you've been mucking around with that brumby."

"You too," Jack advises as she places Tama on his feet, giving him a little push toward the house as Timoti crawls out from under the porch with a grumble. "And stop trying to get her to disappear, yeah? She won't do it if you misbehave. It's like Santa."

"Santa isn't real," Timoti asserts as if she were daft, brushing a bit of dirt from his shirt as he clambers up the stairs.

"Yeah, Jack," Tama tacks on for good measure, sticking his tongue out at her before she feints forward slightly and he runs into the house screaming.

"I swear to god," the Junker observes as she hops back up the steps to stand near the table, starting to set out the tin plates that Paora brought out. "You want some little brothers? Low price of free. Get one free, get the other one free."

"Elder siblings are enough trouble, thank you," comes a response from the taller woman, who moves alongside her to assist in setting out silverware. Long and slender, physician's hands set down forks and knives with precision, as if preparing a tray of surgical equipment. 

"Isn't that the fuckin' truth," Kamaka remarks as he returns from the rover, propping his rifle up against the rail with the safety on and dropping down into a chair. 

Lifting her middle finger in response, Jack nonetheless finishes setting the plates out and assists with the silverware while her mother and Paora move to and fro from the house with trays of admittedly burnt-edged toast, a large covered pot, and various other odds and ends. 

"You want to sit between me and Kama, babe?" Jack asks as it looks like finishing touches are in order. "Twin buffer?"

A raspy chuckle escapes her brother at that and he pats the seat next to him, which Moira moves to take without much hesitation. Kamaka waits until Jack has taken a seat as well to remark to the taller woman, "She must like you."

"I should hope so," comes a response in a thick Dubliner accent, a faint amusement curling the corner of Moira's lips. 

It's comfortable and swiftly becoming familiar again, the long arm that drapes around her shoulders. She missed this, seated close enough to catch the other's cologne, and her hand falls to the taller woman's thigh to rest comfortably there as she awaits the remainder of her family at the table. 

"Me too, given the state of her ne-" Kamaka starts to tease, a grin curling over his features swiftly.

"Shut up," Jack looks around Moira to remark, dark eyes flicking toward him pointedly, "Before I dump your ass in the fuckin' brumby trough, too."

"You could try, princess," Kamaka retorts glibly, a wider grin curling over his tattooed features as he drawls out, "Oh, right...that's the wrong girl isn't it?"

Slowly, a practiced motion that she has surely accomplished before, Jack removes her hand from the taller woman's thigh and reaches down toward her boot to draw the knife that's housed, then leans over to slam it down into the table between her brother's pointer and middle finger, leaned partway over Moira with the action.

With a warmer smile than seems necessary or genuine, Jack asks lightly, "We done?"

He chuckles at that, jerking the hilt of the blade to withdraw it from the wood, and reversing the grip to pass it back, "We're done. Point taken."

She doesn't miss the wink he shoots Moira, who remains utterly silent, but settles an arm back around her shoulders nonetheless once she's shifted back. 

When the remainder of the household comes out, it's a simple affair. Most things are out in the scrub. Paora drops into the chair across from her, the twins across from Kamaka at the end, whispering amongst themselves in a way that she doesn't quite trust. Her mother, Waimarie, unsurprisingly elects to take the chair across from Moira. The better to interrogate them both, she imagines. It's difficult not to bristle at the thought. It's somewhat easer with the pleasant warmth at her side, however.

Dinner consists, it turns out, of burnt bread - her fault, her mother has asserted, for showing up two hours late and necessitating it being re-toasted - and baked beans. Simple. Beans on toast. It's her favorite, to be honest. It's also the staple meal of their household any time her father is out of town and can't cook, and he's been off visiting Nik, so. Burnt toast, baked beans, a plate of bacon stacked almost as high as the pot, and a bowl of quandongs - desert peaches. 

She steals one of those before sinking back into her seat, starting to section out the fruit with her bootknife as toast and scoops of beans are arranged on tin plates. Her mother, oddly enough, leans across the table to cut the burnt edges off of Moira's toast, much to her incredulity, which prompts the twins to pipe up in a rapid succession of, "Can you do our toast?"

"You aren't guests," Waimarie asserts brusquely before scooping beans atop the now burnt-crustless toast. Settling back into a chair afterwards, the Vargas matriarch asserts to her sons, "You have knives. Use them."

This earns a pronounced scowl from Tama and a narrow-eyed peer at their mother from Timoti, before the latter starts to pick the burnt edges off their bread. 

Holding out a section of quandong with her knife, Jack inquires of the woman beside her, "Want to try it? Tastes a bit like apricots and peaches. Bit sour though."

It's accepted with at least a marginally trusting expression, a precise bite taken of the slice before the remainder of it finds a place near the edge of the plate and Moira wipes her fingertips on a napkin. There's a faint wrinkling of a freckled nose at that, a sip of water taken. Jack shakes her head slightly, a faint smile playing over her lips as she continues to cut up the fruit. Guess that's a no. 

"So. Moira," Waimarie intones, voice a little gruff while cutting up beans and toast. 

So it begins, she muses as her brothers start to pass around the plate of bacon. She steals a few pieces for her plate and passes it to Moira, who thankfully takes some. Good. At least she's eating something. Fruit sliced and set along the side of her plate, Jack lifts up a square of toast and beans to take a bite from the corner and chews thoughtfully. It's real fucking crunchy. It's pretty fucking burnt. Just barely edible. Better than the last time her mother made beans on toast, but she's starting to be grateful that someone brought fruit and bacon. 

"I've been told that you are an Oasis Minister. What exactly is it that you do?" comes the remainder of the question. 

The arm comes from around her shoulders as Moira settles in for the meal, the fork lifted instead as the taller woman cuts a corner from a bit of toast in a precise, almost clinical fashion. She's not using silverware herself, which makes it easy to eat with her left hand and rest the right back to Moira's leg, squeezing lightly as if in reassurance in the face of the oncoming interrogation. 

Mismatched eyes settling on her mother, Moira answers in an impossibly smooth voice, one that lilts pleasantly here and there, the hallmarks of a rich Dubliner accent permeating the pronunciations, "Currently, I oversee the Ministry of Genetics and sit on the city board. My research primarily surrounds method through which one may improve the human condition and advance the evolution of our species."

What surprises her isn't so much that. She knows all that, as well as at least a hazy overview of some of Moira's current experiments simply by proxy or from watching over them in the lab so the taller woman can catch a few minutes of sleep here and there. 

What surprises her and to be honest makes a pleasant warmth bloom in her chest, is when that low lilt announces thereafter with conviction, "Jacqueline was the source of my most recent research prospect, truth be told. It was just recently approved by the board of Ministries for research. We hypothesize that through the use of...well. I shall not bore you with the details. Suffice to say, it would increase the nerve function and mobility of a vast many living with medical implants if it comes to fruition."

"The titanium, yeah?" Paora asserts from across the table, his smile warm as he offers a congratulatory nod. "Good on you, rabbit."

"Thanks, cricket," Jack answers around a bite of toast, her thumb brushing a half-circle where it rests on the taller woman's leg. 

Waimarie's eyes fall heavily on her then, her mother observing in a voice that sounds somehow critical. Maybe she's just still bent out of shape from earlier, "I was not aware that you had any _practical_ experience with medicine, Ngaire."

"She is a surprisingly quick study," Moira interjects smoothly before she has a chance to respond to the barbed comment, and if she wasn't already in love with this fucking woman, that would do it. "It has been a collaborative effort and I have learned much regarding tech as a result. Broadening horizons."

Jack is absolutely not used to being flattered. She decides, watching Moira shift the fork to the opposite hand in order to curve an arm back around her shoulders, that she could absolutely get used to it. Sinking in her chair a bit, she leans comfortably to Moira's side as she picks through a bit of bacon and fruit. There's a little smile in her direction, faint at the corner of the other's lips, that she doesn't miss. And that's all the better.

"Sounds right brilliant," Kamaka observes then, leaning back in his chair a bit as he crunches through a few pieces of bacon at the same time. "You a scientist then? Or a medic? Bit of both?"

"A little of both," comes a diplomatic answer as Moira looks to him, and Jack can see in her easy posture and casual conversation how she ended up on the Ministry board of Oasis. "Many of the augmentations that I have achieved were on display in the dispute you witnessed in the Scrapyard."

"That was a neat trick. Never seen anyone straight up disappear like that before," Kamaka states matter-of-factly around his bacon. "Only read about it in comics. Good on you, yeah?"

Waimarie steps back in at that, setting aside a clean plate - the result of someone used to field rations consumed on the go - and settles her elbows on the table to lean forward subtly. Her demeanor is shrewd, the stratagem of someone who has actually torture information out of persons before evident with the next, abrupt question, "I presume you have military experience given the tactics that you utilized. Surreal as some of them appeared."

"I do, in fact," Moira observes casually.

"Where did you serve?" Waimarie presses then. It's not surprising. The Australian military was her mother's life before the Omnic Crisis. The Liberation Front became her life afterwards. It's why so many of the Junkers still call her Major Vargas. 

"I suppose there's no harm in that," comes a low, lilting timbre at that, a sip of water taken before Moira confides with surprising frankness. "It's a matter of public record that I was a member of Blackwatch when it was founded. The majority of the rest is...well. Quite classified."

Why does that sound familiar? Why didn't she have Aro run a quick search on Moira, which she's sure her fucking mother did before they arrived. Somewhere in the trailer, she's certain there's a notepad half-filled with shorthand deliberating important lines of questioning. 

"That sounds familiar," Jack observes in a smooth cadence, head tilting subtly as she looks over at the taller woman. "What's Blackwatch, babe?"

There's a hint of a smirk at the corner of the other's lips now, one that tells her that Moira has been wondering how long it would take her to find that out. 

Whatever it is, the look on her fucking mother's face right now is priceless, those dark eyes a little wide with what she's starting to worry might be respect at the easy way Moira admitted it. That's not anything that features prominently on them often.

"Blackwatch was a covert ops sector of Overwatch before it was dissolved," Waimarie states slowly, expression all the more interested now. "Led to its fall. It operated outside of the boundaries set by the United Nations. Rumor has it that involved several breaches of international law and human rights abuses."

That makes Jack freeze up for a moment, remembering the Overwatch agents lingering in her apartment in the dark. Moira's reaction to that, visceral in her mind. Followed by an injection of medication and an impromptu interrogation before Talon had even become involved.

"Rumor has it," Moira repeats lightly, fingertips lifting the near-forgotten slice of desert peach from the side of the plate. She takes another small bite from it, as if the flavour profile may have changed, then sets it back down with a little shake of her head. "We had berets. It was all very fetching. I was fresh out of medical school at the time."

Kamaka is pulling something up on his comm, the screen flickering for a moment before he asks, "This is some right badass shit. Hell. You're alright for Oasis, you know that?" 

He pauses then, narrowing his eyes faintly at the screen as if it may be incorrect, "Says here Blackwatch was founded in like...twenty-fifty though, mate?"

"It was founded in twenty fifty-three," Moira corrects in a low drawl, taking another tentative sip of water before leaning back comfortably. About a quarter of a meal eaten, which is honestly neither as shocking nor as bad as she may have thought prior to becoming accustomed to the other's eating habits. Which are _atrocious_. 

"What'd you join when you were like fifteen?" Kamaka asks with a snort of amusement at that, snatching up another few strips of bacon and a peach when the plates and bowls make another round. "Child prodigy? Smallest doctor in all the lands."

A husky chuckle escapes the taller woman at that, followed by the clarification of, "I was twenty-five."

Twenty fifty-three.

Jack was born in 2046.

In 2053 she was seven.

Moira was...twenty-five? 

That doesn't seem right. Everything in her brain comes to a screeching halt at that, her bacon hitting the plate an her dark eyes flicking up with absolute disbelief as she asserts, "Bullshit."

There's that faint hint of a smirk once more, one that you would have to know this fucking woman to know to look for, but it's there, and Jack's eyes narrow faintly when mismatched eyes meet hers, no closer to determining if she's serious or not. 

Reaching for her napkin, Jack wipes her hands clean, making sure there are neither crumbs nor grease before holding out two fingers. 

"Really, Jacqueline?" comes a response that is touched with a hint of humor, freckled features cast with it in like kind as the taller woman slips a hand into that slate grey jacket. Into the pocket where she knows cigarettes and a book of matches are secreted away. 

" _Really_ says the woman with my complete medical history sitting on her desk in Oasis," Jack retorts with a soft snort, though the humor in the other's voice starts to bleed into her own. "Let's see it."

When the identification card comes to rest between her fingertips, warm from being tucked at Moira's side, Jack scrutinizes it from top to bottom. 

_Name: Moira C._

_Surname: O'Deorain_

"What's the _C_ for, babe?" she can't help but to ask the question, an impish curl to the corner of her lips as she does so. 

"Caoimhe," comes the response, pleasantly low as the taller woman tilts her head subtly, mismatched eyes scanning over the card as if the information thereon were somehow novel. 

"Keeva," Jack repeats slowly, the intonation somewhat different in her own voice. "Keeva with a _C_?" 

"Caoimhe," is what Moira draws out, pronouncing it more slowly an then spelling for her benefit. "It's C-A-O-I-M-H-E." 

"Irish is such bullshit," Jack mouths it at her instead of saying it aloud, and the arm draped around her shoulders curves pointedly a little tighter in response, making her laugh. "Alright. Alright, I'm reading." 

_Country of Residence: Oasis, Iraq_

_Place of Birth: Dublin, Ireland_

All checks out with shit she already knew. 

_Date of Birth: October 27, 2028_

Dark eyes climb up that tall form to meet a mismatched gaze, scarlet and blue vivid in the coming dusk and a smirk still gracing the corner of the other woman's lips. What she intends to say is "No shit". 

What she actually succeeds in doing is saying something completely unintelligible in front of God and everyone. It couldn't even loosely be considered coherent language. 

Kamaka is all but _howling_ at that, bent over his plate at the table, his shoulders shaking while the twins start to pepper questions at a breakneck speed once more. 

Forty-eight. 

Moira O'Deorain is forty-eight. 

Jacqueline Vargas is thirty. 

Her mother is fifty-three. 

Five years difference between Moira and her _mom_. 

Eighteen between them. 

Moira looks as if all of this were a rather novel experience, the hint of a smirk not fading as time continues. And she knew. Of course Moira knew. Moira has seen her medical records before, probably knows her fucking blood type and the length of her femur and about the time she fractured a finger in the machine lab and didn't tell anyone until she couldn't move it. 

Just like she knows with little doubt that Moira O'Deorain has been rendering girls speechless in more way than one longer than she's been alive, especially if that fucking Carbrey Burke story holds any weight. 

She sinks back into her chair a bit, settling into a sort of stunned silence as she peers down at the ID card in her hand. 

She doesn't catch the first thing that's said. Not even the second one. She clues in around the fifteenth when she hears Moira advise nonchalantly, "Forty-eight, as of October." 

Her mother's response is a short, dry laugh, before catching her attention with the frank assessment, "You're nearer the right age for me than my daughter." 

A husky chuckle sounds from Moira in response. 

"Wait... _what_?" Jack manages then, blinking several times in rapid succession as a decided colour rises to her features, her ears feeling overwarm of a sudden. 

Off in the vicinity of Moira's side, Kamaka appears to have choked on a bit of dry toast and the sound of his coughing echoes strangely off the tin trailers, made all the more evident when he attempts to clear his airway in between a fit of choking and laughing. There are tears, genuine tears streaming down his tattooed features. 

Across the table, in contrast, the twins appear to have taken the opportunity to sneak bacon from the plate and are slipping it under the table a slice at a time, where a happy crunching indicates that Barra is most likely the recipient. 

As the silence stretches on and Kamaka's laughter starts to fade, there's a subtle shift in the warmth to her side as Moira moves, only just enough to press a light, chaste kiss to her cheek, a guise under which the taller woman confides in a low and oddly encouraging timbre, "Count to ten, Jacqueline." 

It's familiar enough to her. Helps in scattered moments in which her focus is absolutely shot, the light tapping of the taller woman's fingertips along her shoulder indicative that while Moira believes it will be beneficial to do so, she is not about to count aloud with her this time - saving her a bit of face. Jack allows the faint curl of a smile to touch the corner of her lips, takes a steadying breath, and immediately snaps her attention to Kamaka behind her when he starts to laugh again. 

"Yeah," he teases brazenly, grinning from ear to fucking ear, "Listen to your new mother, _Jacqueline_." 

_Only Moira gets to call her Jacqueline._

It snaps her back into focus abruptly, not entirely certain how she ended up standing, but bending to bestow a warm and perhaps not entirely dinner appropriate kiss upon her favorite scientist, mussing the taller woman's hair a little in the process. The ID card comes to rest beside Moira's plate with a soft 'click' before Jack straightens. 

"Excuse me, babe. Gotta handle a bit of light work," Jack advises, and her dark eyes snap sharply back onto Kamaka. 

__He bolts._ _

Smart. 

Jack has always been smarter. No sooner do his feet hit the stairs than hers hit the seat of her chair and then the railing, and when his lanky, stupid ass tries to make a break for it across the backyard, she jumps onto his back from about four feet up, tackiling him down into the red dirt. He wheezes as the air gusts out of him, grappling with her hands as she tries to rub a handful of earth into his face. 

Above them on the porch, Moira clears her throat slowly, maintaining a cool composure as she combs lightly through her hair to straighten it, though a subtle tinge of colour has risen to her cheekbones nonetheless. Paora, to his credit, chuckles as he moves around the table to sit backwards in the chair beside her, gesturing toward his siblings to advise the tall geneticist, "Welcome to the Vargas family, mate. Doesn't really get better than this." 

"He's exaggerating, dear," Waimarie intones over her laced fingertips, though her dark eyes are raptly attentive to the scuffle, as if the outcome were somehow of importance. "Now, tell me a bit more about this Blackwatch business if you would?" 

About five minutes of scuffling in the scrub later, Kamaka manages to spit out a bit of red dirt, mud really at this point, and still laughing, catches Jack by the belt and one boot to drag her under the brumby fence into the paddock. She has a slowly dawning horror at what he's about to do, her hands catching on the metal trough of water as he attempts to throw her into it, grasping first at the rim and then to his arm, before - in a last-minute and desperate bid for freedom - she reaches out to grasp the solar fence and delivers them both a nasty shock for the effort. 

He jerks back involuntarily at that, though doesn't let go, and a sharp pain lances through her fingers as they slice a bit on the wire. It's followed by the immediate, cloyingly rust-and-water scent of being plunged down into the trough, though in all fairness, it's easy to wrestle him down into it after her with the way her leg is locked around him. The water is lukewarm from being in the sun all day, smells of river, rust, old metal. 

Arguably better than being dumped in the actual river, given that there's no fucking crocs or bullsharks in it, and when they come up laughing and splashing at one another, there's a moment in which the tension of the day just melts away. Almost as if she were sixteen again and Kama was eleven, tearing through the scrub on a hoverbike and stopping halfway through the day to jump into the shimmeringly clear pond near the salt flats, the sharp sting of saltwater in their red-rimmed eyes as they made their way home in the setting sun. 

"You son of a bitch," she laughs out as she starts to stand, wringing a bit of water from her hair as best she can and flicking some blood from her fingertips. It's largely superficial, but she pushes him lightly and observes with amusement, "Look at my fucking hand, you shit." 

"I have dirt in my _mouth_. Don't whinge," he retorts with a raspy chuckle as he starts to lever up as well. With a cheeky wink, he confides, "Maybe you can ask your new _mom_ to kiss it better for you." 

"Fuck you," Jack answers through laughter, dark eyes meeting his as she clicks her tongue to the roof of her mouth and counters in a lower timbre, "Shows what you fucking know." Grabbing him by the shoulder to steady herself as she climbs out of the trough, she starts to tack on something far more inappropriate before she hears the thundering of hoofbeats in their direction and it shifts suddenly from, "If I wanted something I'd call her d-" to "Shit-shit-shit." 

Jack and Kamaka's mad scramble back through the solar fence is far less graceful than they entered the paddock, which isn't saying much, involving not a few shocks as wet skin and wet clothes make contact with the solar wire and a wrestling match between Jack, her hands wrapped in the back of Kamaka's shirt, and the brumby, with its teeth sunken into his boot. 

Her brother is pulled free. The boot is lost to the brumby. 

It's an acceptable casualty. 

Once she's washed off the trough water and changed into dry clothes, Jack carries the wet ones outside to drape them over the porch rail to dry overnight, then drops into the chair nearest Moira, combing through her damp hair with bandaged fingers as she listens to the taller woman converse pleasantly with her mother about...military operations, sounds like. Superb. Her mother's third favorite topic after _when are you moving back to Junkertown_ and _how's the Cooper girl_. 

Kamaka, wearing a pair of basketball shorts to leave the rest of his heavily tattooed frame bare, is down in the yard with Pao, heaping some dry wood into the firepit to start one up as the stars start to come out in full force, vibrant against the indigo and dusky blue of a night sky slowly tilting into velvet dark. She doesn't pay much attention to the conversation beyond the low lilt of Moira's voice and the drier cadence of her mother's, but leans comfortably against the taller woman when an arm drapes back around her shoulders, her hands preoccupied beneath the table with the ruffling of Barra's ears for the moment. 

As the smoky scent of the bonfire drifts over, Waimarie excuses herself from the table to head into the house at the twin's extended wheedling, intent on procuring some marshmallows at their request. 

Around then, a low lilt finds its way near her ear, the taller woman's head ducked to confide there with certainty even as a free hand tugs lightly at the side of her shirt, "This is _not_ yours, is it, Jacqueline?" 

Dark eyes settle to mismatched, their colour all the more vivid in the dusk, backlit by the flicker of the bonfire below as embers start to kick up, and Jack answers in a pleased murmur, "Isn't it?" 

It's not. Not even a little. The heather gray t-shirt that she pulled on before she came out falls to mid-thigh on her, and she rolled the sleeves up to leave her arms bare. It's not hers, but it is soft, carries the faint scent of bergamot and burnt amber that always accompanies Moira. She's not giving it back. Not yet, anyways. 

"Is that so?" Moira answers with a faint smirk, sculpted countenance near enough that she could count the freckles on the bridge of the other's nose if she wanted to. She loves it. 

"Yeah," Jack responds with a little, pleased smile turning the corner of her lips. Brushing her nose lightly to a freckled one, she doesn't quite kiss Moira at that, but their lips brush lightly as she confides, "You want it back?" Her head tilts and her smile curves subtly wider, "You're going to have to give me that one." 

"You are _impossible_ ," comes the response, followed by a soft chuckle, and the cool, soft curve of those lips meets hers once, gently. 

"I think it's a _very fair_ offer," Jack counters with amusement afterwards, dark eyes glittering in the dim glow of the fire. 

"You think that because I do not _fit_ any of your attire, and therefore turnabout is hardly fair play," Moira asserts in turn, a brief-lived and not wholly sincere scoff sounding from her. The pleased flicker of a smile, though? That's real. 

"Oi, lovebirds!" Kamaka calls up toward the porch now that the fire is roaring, flicking open the tab on his beer to take a swallow. "You gonna whisper sweet nothings all night or come down? Got about two minutes before the twins eat your marshmallows for you." 

"Beans and toast, beer, and marshmallows," Moira drawls out lowly, not loud enough to carry down toward the fire or up to the house. A brow arches at that. Jack laughs. 

"It's a very well-balanced Junker meal," Jack teases in response, her fingertips catching the front of the taller woman's jacket as she stands to draw Moira after her. With a cheeky smile, she adds, "Booze, sweets, and burnt shit. All the major food groups, babe." 

"That..." the taller woman observes, rising and putting up little protest as they are drawn down the stairs in her wake. "Is an appalling thought." 

Settling down cross-legged on one of the massive, flat stones that ring the fire-pit, Jack catches first one and then the second beer that her brother throws over, settling them down in between them as Moira comes to sit beside her. With a decided mischief, she counters, "Says the woman who lives on whiskey and cigarettes. Pot. Kettle." 

"Not purely," Moira scoffs at that, though accepts one of the beverages, cracking it open with relative ease to take a slow sip. A freckled nose wrinkles at that, but it doesn't deter the taller woman from taking a second sip afterwards, mismatched eyes watching the fire. 

Jack follows suit. It isn't what she'd call good beer. It's cold from the icebox and more than a little bitter, and not half as decent as the hard liquor that comes out of Junkertown. But it's familiar, reminds her of home in the same way the bonfire does. The same way that the endless Outback sky overhead does. 

She leans over, dark eyes glittering, to remark, "Biting Junkers sometimes isn't a food group, babe." 

When the taller woman clicks her teeth once, Jack laughs, takes another swig of beer as she watches her mother come down the steps with marshmallows and Pao return from the scrub with a handful of long, sharpened sticks. 

It's funny, seeing Moira loosen up. Particularly here. It's not quite the ease with which they were in Oasis, but it's not quite not either. The taller woman reminds her of a chameleon in some regards, changing colour to suit her surroundings, finding a way to meld into a backdrop that doesn't fit with surprising wit. 

She very nearly spills her beer when Tama collides with her, clambering around to settle into her lap, and very nearly spills it again when Timoti drops into Moira's with little ceremony, his goggles askew atop his head from whatever he's been doing in the house in the meantime. She's not sure she's ever actually seen him put them over his eyes unless there's a duststorm. 

"Oi, little warning?" Jack teases, ruffling the boy's hair before pulling an arm around him comfortably. The taller woman at her side has stiffened subtly at the sudden intrusion into her personal space, but just as swiftly as it occurred, she can feel that lean frame start to unwind despite both all odds and the drowsy Junker child rubbing his eye in her lap. 

She knows what they want already. After last year's incident with Jamie and the roman candles, which almost burned down two of the trailers, they aren't allowed near the bonfire without direct supervision. With a cursory check of Tama's pockets, she leans over to check Timoti's, ensuring that both are incendiary and firecracker free before helping them each put a marshmallow on a stick to roast. 

It's a pleasant evening. The kind she wishes she had more of. And when they finally head into the easternmost of the tin trailers, the one she shares with Paora and Kamaka, and find their way, Jack a little buzzed and Moira decidedly _not_ , down to her room at the end of the hall, it's after midnight. 

Falling down onto a bed she hasn't slept in in years, a mattress on the floor that smells faintly of citrus soap and cloves, machine oil, perhaps a bit like dingo when Barra slinks his way up onto it to plant himself between Moira's back and the wall, white paws curved in the air like a cockroach. It's almost normal. It's Junkertown normal. It could be theirs, she thinks, as they talk into the early hours of the morning about anything and everything, until their eyes are too heavy to keep open. 

And tonight, when the light switches off in the tin trailer beneath the Junkertown cliffs, Moira O'Deorain catches her gently before she can settle too far into the pillows, kisses her goodnight. It's a soft, warm thing that lingers between them. It tastes like cheap beer and burnt marshmallows, the smoky scent of the bonfire lingering on clothes and in fiery hair. 

It feels like home. 


	29. Christmas Fic Interlude: Update

Hey guys.

I didn't want to throw this up in the main fic because it's a fair bit in the future, but I've got about 25k in Christmas Special going up (later than I wanted it to be) as I edit it out.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/17259686/chapters/40587917

Merry (Late) Christmas :)

I should be back to Friday updates on the main fic next week, after this monstrosity is all posted.


	30. morning comes too fast and i'm tired of the routine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ** spiders  
> ** continued questionable judgment  
> ** TALONFAM SOON :O

When Jack wakes in the morning, it's alone, nestled comfortably in her too-small bed in the tin trailers beneath Junkertown, amidst sheets that carry the scent of citrus and clove, a bit of machine oil. She wakes alone, but the hallmarks of the other woman are there. In the way that the threadbare quilt her grandmother made her is tucked carefully around her and how the curtains are closed to keep the sun from shining directly onto the bed. In the various odds and ends - a comb, a bit of pomade, a glass vial of amber cologne - that sit atop the flat surface of her workstation.

It's good. It's good in a lot of ways. It's funny how odd it looks in her room, precisely set out amidst the scattered odds and ends, machine parts and bits of tech out of the Omnium. The Junkertown trailer, after all, isn't large, one of three that make up their familial living situation. The western, which houses her mother and father's things, the twins. The central, which is home to most of their utilities and the main kitchen that hardly sees any use. And the eastern, which she shares with Paora and Kamaka when she's home.

In her room, there's only enough room for the bed - little more than a mattress on the floor - the workstation that's pushed up beneath the sill of the window, and the military trunk that she uses as a dresser in a pinch. It also serves as a bedside stand, and she can see the dog-eared copy of _Frankenstein_ that rests atop it now, likely pilfered from the stack of books atop it. It doesn't surprise her at all that Moira would be up earlier than she is, reading from the small stack of books in the corner. 

She wonders how long Moira laid awake reading this morning before finally getting ready. Wishes, for a moment, that she had been up a bit earlier to simply languish away a part of the morning with her like that.

Rubbing a bit of sand from the corner of her eye, Jack stretches slowly, languidly, a little smile playing over her features at the scent of campfire, of burnt amber and bergamot still lingering in the pillows. As she moves to the workstation, still in the heather gray shirt and black joggers she wore to bed, she can hear the murmur of voices well down the hall, and hastily combs her hair back with her fingers, tying it in a loose knot at the base of her skull before pushing the door open.

It sticks, halted somewhat by the dingo sprawled just on the other side, who scrambles up to his feet with several wags of the tail at her presence. And so she bends to scoop him up, scratching behind his ears as she heads down the hall toward the kitchen with an altogether pleased Barra in her arms. 

It's never hard, following that lowly lilting voice toward its source, and today is little different. The kitchen. Down the hall, third door on the right. It's small. Barely fits the people in it, but the window is open to let in the early morning breeze, and it stirs in her hair when she opens the back door to let Barra out into the scrub for a while. 

Kamaka, Pao, and the twins are clustered around the table already, in what she would normally consider to be a silent plea for her to make breakfast. Her younger brothers are playing with a tarantula they must have found outside, letting it skitter to and fro across the table. The older two? Watching the stove over cups of coffee, their eyes agleam like a pack of wild dogs circling a carcass. 

She empathizes. 

Whatever Moira is embroiled in making on the tiny stovetop, stooped slightly to avoid fiery hair brushing the ceiling, smells like heaven. Bacon. It smells a lot like bacon. Same difference, really. Bacon, coffee, and several other things that she can't quite place and doesn't care to at the moment.

Padding over behind the taller woman, Jack slides her hands into the back pockets of the other's slacks, leaning there a comfortably before a kiss finds its way between those lean shoulders through the dark, soft fabric of a t-shirt. She nuzzles there with a soft sound thereafter, feeling drowsy and more than a little content. 

"Mm. I could get used to this," is what she murmurs there, rubbing her cheek against the back of the other's shoulder lightly.

"Would you like to?" comes a low response, that freckled countenance turning as if to look at her over one lean shoulder. The hint of a smirk that touches Moira's features is familiar as the taller woman drawls out, "I have a guest room."

"Mm," Jack murmurs then, the corner of her lips curling. Dark eyes finding the other's mismatched from behind dark lashes, she counters smoothly, "What if I don't want to stay in the _guest_ room?"

There's a low chuckle at that, one that seems to reverberate through the too-small kitchen in pleasant, welcoming way, and Moira turns from the stove to face her. The kiss that finds her way to her cheek is gentle beyond belief, makes her fingertips feel warm and a dull ache settle into her chest as the taller woman confides, "We can converse upon it later."

A second kiss, no less fond, is placed to her temple, and shortly thereafter, a tin plate finds its way into her hands. With a gentle direction toward the table, Moira intones simply, " _Maidin mhaith_ , Jacqueline. Go eat your breakfast."  
** Good morning

A wider smile cuts across her coppery features at that, her dark eyes fond when they meet mismatched for a moment more, and with little protest at the directive, Jack makes her way over toward the table to settle in the seat nearest Timoti and Tama. 

"What's that?" Tama asks immediately, one grubby hand pushing his goggles up into his hair. His night-dark eyes are wide as he peers over the edge of the table with interest.

Jack pushes a bit of fluffy egg with her fork. Scrambled eggs with yesterday's bacon, flecks of black pepper, something else that she can't quite place. Toast with butter and a thin layer of vegemite, which she knows that she likes and Moira hates. 

"Eggs," she replies with a yawn, letting him clamber up into her lap to sit as if he belonged there. Wrapping an arm loosely around him, she places a kiss atop his head before reaching forward for the coffee pot. With a steady hand, she fills one of the empty tin cups with black coffee, and, when she's certain that Moira isn't looking, adds a more than generous amount of syrup to it from the little jar on the table before stirring it with a spoon.

"That's not what eggs look like," Timoti remarks suspiciously from near her, squinting a bit as he allows the tarantula to skitter off the back of his hand. It takes shelter beneath a few old newspapers nearby, peering out from beneath with what she imagines to be judgment in its little spider eyes.

"Get your spider off the table," Jack counters smoothly, taking a slow sip of her hot and now decidedly oversweet coffee before lifting up a square of toast to take a bite from the corner. Tama, to his credit, has already stolen a fork from the nearby place setting and started tucking into her scrambled eggs with a decided relish that lets her know that the better portion of her breakfast is already forfeit.

"It doesn't taste like eggs neither," Tama intones around a mouthful of _her_ breakfast, and when she uses a bit of toast to try and scoop up a bit of scramble from the plate, he spears it with his fork to stop her. "It's good!"

Jack can't quite help but to laugh at that. He's certainly not wrong. Their scrambled eggs are a dreadfully different affair. One that usually has a bit of crunch to them from the shells and isn't often seasoned, if she's being honest. She's had better eggs in diners in Sydney. Not better than this, she suspects, if she could actually try them. But that doesn't look to be in the foreseeable future. 

"I will end your miserable little life," Jack confides as she attempts to free her toast and he snatches the half a slice out of her fingers, stuffing it into his mouth in one go to prevent her from taking it. Laughingly, she adds at that, "This is _my_ breakfast, you little brat."

"I can easily make more, rabbit," comes a lowly lilting voice from near the stove, a half-smile playing upon freckled features as Moira watches them for a moment. "And am, in fact. As it seems there are plenty of hungry mouths to feed at current."

"Mm, you sure?" Jack asks as she looks over toward the stove, a fond smile turning up the corner of her lips in turn. She likes this. It's a little worrying how much she likes it. Everything about it, even, with the exception of the spider that's skittering over the kitchen table, is pretty damned good at the moment. Catching Timoti by lightly by the ear with two fingers, she pulls him gently over an reiterates once more, "Tarantula off the table, please."

She releases him immediately thereafter, and when he sticks his tongue out at her, she sticks hers out right back. A little snort of amusement escapes her when he scoops the spider up in his palm, wrinkling his nose, and then veers off in the direction of the stove, presumably to show it off.

"Incoming, babe," Jack confides for the taller woman's benefit, lifting her mug for another modest swallow of coffee, and emitting a low noise when Tama hurriedly scrambles out of her lap with her freshly cleaned plate, making his way over as well.

"Rabbit," Kamaka drawls out lowly from over his coffee, a raspy chuckle sounding from him before he leans forward a bit, asserting with more emphasis, " _Babe_. You two are fuckin' disgusting."

"You crook about it, precious?" Jack counters easily, sinking back in her seat and arching a brow slightly with the question. She's more than a little smug now that she's getting breakfast, in spite of having forfeited it to the twins once already. "Cause she's well fit _and_ I'm getting breakfast." 

Glancing sidelong at her youngest brothers, she tacks on noncommittally, "I mean probably. Eventually."

His dark curls in a wild disarray and goggles pushed up to hold them back, Tama holds up his empty plate to Moira in tandem with Timoti's lifting of the spider, and asks, "Can I have more eggs?"

"What do you say?" Jack prompts from over the rim of her coffee mug, taking another sip as she leans back into her chair a bit further.

A momentary slip in composure, easily missed if one weren't paying attention, mismatched eyes blink once, slowly, at the juxtaposition of empty plate and large arachnid presented.

" _Selenocosmia crassipes_ ," the taller woman remarks cooly at the tarantula held up in her direction. "A whistling tarantula. Mind you do not place her too near the stove. A touch too warm for her, I would think."

Tama peers over at Jack, seeming to think upon her question for a time before asking, "Now?"

"Selen...selemo," Timoti mumbles to himself, trying to sound out the scientific name of the creature. He eventually settles on, "Her name's Helen. I found her under some rocks."

"Helen is quite lovely," Moira remarks simply, taking the matter in what Jack would consider to be remarkable stride.

Another sip of coffee taken, Jack directs toward Kamaka and Paora this time, a pointed look shared between both of them as if it were there fault entirely. It probably is, "I leave for six months and he forgets how to say please? Christ."

"You may try again," Moira intones to the boy in her stead, mismatched eyes cool and patient on the Junker child nearest the stove. There's the faintest curl to the corner of the taller woman's lips at that, before a perfect brow arches sharply. 

Tama seems at a loss as to what to do for the better part of a minute, lifting his plate higher as if that may elicit a reaction, though he eventually settles on an admittedly pouty, "Please?"

"Since you asked politely," Moira confirms at that, taking the plate to add another portion of eggs and toast onto it. Presumably the second breakfast Jack will be denied at this rate. 

When the boy moves to take the plate back, however, the other's hand does not release from it, and he stares up, up, up in confusion at the tall woman for several long seconds before her brow arches expectantly a second time. 

"Thank you!" Tama finds the words eventually, a wide grin splitting his features once the plate is relinquished and he can make his way back toward the table. Clambering back up into Jack's lap at that, he confides smugly, "I got eggs."

"Yeah, I know," she answers with a soft snort, nicking one of the slices of toast and using it to shovel up a bit of egg, much to his protest. "You stole mine, you little shit."

It's fucking delicious. No wonder he's hoarding the fucking scrambled eggs like some hobbits might try to take them from him. With little ceremony, Jack slides out from under him in the chair, leaving him to it, and meanders over nearer the stove, only to pause at the sudden, mischievous smile that graces Timoti's features.

When he notices her noticing, he bolts for the door. 

That doesn't bode well.

It isn't until she circles around near the door to let Barra in that she sees the tarantula on the back of Moira's shirt. 

"Motherfucker," Jack breathes out as she lets Barra in, advising as she circles around the taller woman thereafter and attempts to discern the best way to remove the arachnid, "You appear to have a Helen."

"Remove her, if you would," the response is nonchalant, nary so much as a flinch to betray that this is any matter for concern.

Jack does little else but peer at the spider for a long minute, the creature seemingly content to remain perched on the back of Moira's shoulder. She confides blithely, "Sorry. I can't reach."

"Honestly, Jacqueline," the taller woman responds, a low chuckle chasing it. There's perhaps a touch of a challenge in mismatched eyes as they settle on hers, an arch to one perfect brow as Moira inquires, "They are far more afraid of us than we need be of them, I assure you."

She wrinkles her nose at that, leaning up to place a quick kiss to the other's lips before circling around to look at the spider once more. 

"I'm not afraid of jack shit, babe," Jack confides with more bravado than she feels, hesitating for a second before she reaches up to gently pull the tarantula off the other's shirt. "Doesn't mean that I want to touch it, though."

Her response is only a smirk.

\--- 

It's only spring in the Outback, but it's already swelteringly hot out in the garage in the late morning. Even with the door wide open to let in what little breeze is offered. It feels like the peak of summer already, the red-orange sun shimmering down relentlessly onto a tin roof and threatening to roast her alive while she works. She can't say that she doesn't love it. The smell of hot, red dust, machine oil, and metal. This is where she cut her teeth. Went from the eldest Vargas child to the mechanic who ran the Jackrabbit, who helped build Sovereign. 

Who lied about attending university on her application to the Ministries in Oasis to get hired on the Junker program, then accomplished the job that they asked of her better and in half the time of the tenured members of the R&D department.

It's the little things.

Sprawled out on an oil-stained canvas on the floor, a flimsy barrier between her and the hard earth beneath, Jack is half-under her hoverbike and elbow deep in the chassis of it, having already accounted for some of the damage that was incurred when Kamaka took off the regulator without unfastening all the bolts properly. It's not terrible. Sure, she'll give him an earful about it later, but nothing that a bit of elbow grease won't fix in time for their trip out onto the salt flats. 

She's more crook about the loss of the modified regulator than anything. Of course there's equipment that she can use to retrofit one out in the bunker, but she doesn't have that here, and of course Mako had wanted it as part of his payment. 

She'd be lying if there wasn't a sense of anticipation about the upcoming drive. There's nothing that she doesn't love about tearing across the Outback on this bike. Especially if it involves a trip out onto the salt flats. Especially if it means being near the ocean. The fact that Moira O'Deorain has agreed to it, without so much as a shred of protest to the extended journey toward the coast? That just means that it's all coming up Jack this week.

There hasn't been much of a chance to take her hoverbike out in ages, though, and that necessitates a fair amount of normal maintenance. The checking of pressures, valves, fluids, the changing of filters and fuel to ensure that it will be enough to safely take them out to the bunker she keeps near the flats. All her spare parts are there. The back-up framework she built in case the Jackrabbit was ever irreparable, which it sure as shit now, blown to pieces from the inside out on the chassis of the Stonefish. 

There's a fair amount of stored goods in the compartment waiting for her out there. Food. Tech. Some gear for repairs. But more importantly, her share of the Stonefish that she felled out in 'town, after the Scrapyard and the Queen took their cut. And whether Jaeden was being a fucking monster or not, Jack always got a prime share of tech. Mostly because whether Jaeden was _being a fucking monster or not_ , Jack always used it for the betterment of Junkertown. Talon too, now, she supposes. 

Another reason to head out on the coast. Akande is interested in her setting up her bunker as a back-up safehouse for the strike team, in the event it's needed, and it's honestly been a while since she's been out there. Moira had some concerns about the amount of unstable tech there, given the proclivities of some of the team, though the geneticist hadn't elaborated, so there was a fair amount she'd have to sort through and 'quarantine' so as to avoid another incident.

Her first tech bunker is currently a crater a few miles off the house, the result of mixing polymer going _very wrong_. 

There's also showing everyone around, teaching them how the filtration system works, the ventilation, the locks and back-up defenses, in addition to the standard _how not to fuck around with my tech and the massive amount of unstable materials I'm keeping there_.

Bartholeme hasn't been apprehended yet, either, which is another wrench in their plans. Akande had been forthright enough about that on the comm earlier, a quick call after breakfast to solidify what they'd be up to for the rest of the week. Turns out, the Talon team and a unit of the Queensguard cracked into an omnic base not far from 'town and set it back up as a patrol outpost, but the motherfucker himself is still nowhere to be found. And while the continued synergy between Talon and Junkertown bodes well for continued cooperation, which she knows is what Akande _wants_ , the fact that a former member of Talon's hierarchy is still out there gunning for them is an unsettling thought.

Almost as unsettling as how well Akande and Jaeden are getting on, if she's being honest. Those fuckers will be making each other friendship bracelets by the end of the week, she thinks.

As she applies a bit of oil to the threading of a bolt and works it into place with more than a little effort, Jack has time to contemplate that after this week, which has graciously been afforded to her and their resident mad scientist as a reprieve after the events of the past month, her schedule is going to be a bit of a clusterfuck. She isn't altogether looking forward to four days in Rialto and three in Oasis. Especially since Akande had dubbed one of her Oasis days as a _swing day_ in the event they need her to navigate Junkertown politics.

She'd told him flat out that her involvement was just as likely to make Jaden _not_ want to follow any of their suggestions as it was to have any positive effect.

_The Queen trusts you_ , he said.

Yeah. She doesn't doubt that the Queen trusts her. You build up that sort of rapport when you're on again off again and also depending on each other not to get shot. But Jae also likes making her life complicated for no other reason than simply to do it, and she isn't altogether thrilled about it, especially in the wake of the knock-down scrap in the Arena earlier this week.

Plus, it only leaves her three days for both her machine shop work, which Akande mysteriously and more than a little vaguely said _he had handled_ , as well as seeing her favorite doctor. And cramming five days of work into three isn't ideal. She'd balked at it. Maybe even accused him, standing behind the garage on her comm in the sweltering heat, after he'd mentioned the possibility of a day in Junkertown, of actively trying to ruin her life.

He had laughed.

Then he told her that her callsign was going to be Rook. _Because the cornerstone of any good terrorist organization is the only motherfucker who knows how to fix the coffee machine_ , he said, parroting her words in the warehouse back at her.

He's kind of a motherfucker, that Akande.

Her schedule isn't an eventuality she's thrilled about, in any case. Particularly after the long month of silence and distance that's consumed the better part of the time that she's been seeing the geneticist. A month of talking every night on the comm, near about, followed by radio silence.

But she has the week. At the end of the week, Akande will meet them out at the bunker in the salt flats with the rest of the team. Which means that in a week, she'll be headed out to Rialto to get the dogshit kicked out of her for four days and Moira will be on a transport out to Oasis, likely hopelessly embroiled in all the projects, research, and Ministry affairs that couldn't be handled remotely in her absence. 

Her bones are starting to itch again. She tries to ignore it, shifts a little uncomfortably as if to scratch her shoulder on the rocks beneath the canvas, as if that might somehow help. It doesn't, really, but the idea makes her feel better. 

Fucking radiation.

She needs to remember to take her radpills when she goes inside.

That's what she's thinking about when there's a light tap to her boot from someone else's, and she slides out from under the hoverbike to look up at the impossibly tall, marble-pale woman looming over her, who is somehow managing to make a pair of old military fatigues and a black tanktop look _real fucking good_ right now.

It takes her a second to realize that Moira is holding a canteen of water in one hand, at least until the taller woman takes a seat on the canvas beside her and settles a small handful of capsules in one hand and the container in the other.

"I was just thinking about that," Jack admits with a sound of amusement, using her elbow to lever up into a seated position and toss back the various medicines presented to her. It's not just radpills. She doesn't know what the rest of them are, but she's also not a medical professional, so she opts not to question it. 

Lukewarm, the water that Jack chases them with washes away at least a measure of the acrid, bitter taste of the capsules, but leaves behind a faint tinge of rust. Most water out here tastes like that, though. Oasis might be ruining her for the finer things in life.

Wrinkling her nose faintly, she rakes a hand through her sweaty hair to comb it back, tidying the knot she's pulled it into and re-securing the band that holds it before confessing, "My joints are starting to itch a bit again. How long before that stops, you think?"

There's a displeased look at that fact, one that carries through to the vivid scarlet and blue of the other woman's eyes, before Moira confides in a low, whiskey and smoke timbre, "It may be a time, rabbit. I will have a better indication once we are back in the lab and I have access to the appropriate equipment."

"For now, however," there's a crook of a finger in her direction, indicating she turn, so she does. And then the warmer of those palms slides beneath the back of her shirt to rest between the shoulders, " _Táim do do leigheas._ "  
** I'm going to make you better.

It doesn't matter that it's been done before. There's something strange about it every time. A warm sensation that emanates from beneath that palm, spreads through the skin, the muscle below. She imagines this is how cats must feel when they sprawl out in the windowsill, soaking up the warm glow of the sun shining through. It feels good. And when the other has finished, a thumb brushing the back of her shoulder lightly before that touch recedes, she does feel some better. 

The joints ache less. The itching of her bones isn't as prevalent. She'll sure as fuck take it.

"God, that's better," Jack confirms softly, rolling her shoulders slightly as she does. "Thanks, babe."

There's a faint smirk at that, one that doesn't quite mask the subtle look of displeasure, or perhaps concern she sees in those mismatched eyes, before it's carefully masked. She wonders if she should be concerned by it. Probably. Moira hadn't exactly been thrilled with the amount of radiation exposure she had a few days back. Not that there was much she could do to avoid it if she didn't want them all to go up in a nuclear blast anyway.

"Would you care for some assistance, rabbit?" comes a follow up question, low and lilting. That freckled countenance is cast softly in amber in the late morning light, the colour of the eyes watching her from behind coppery lashes especially vibrant in it. There's more than a hint of a smirk then, the inquiry of, "Or shall I leave you to your brooding?"

"It's not nice to watch people like that," Jack counters amusedly, though leans forward to steal a quick kiss from the taller woman before sinking back onto the canvas to slide back under the bike. "You should warn a girl. Who knows what I might get up to if I don't know you're there? _Especially if I start thinking about you_."

There's a little scoff at that, one that bears its own mirth, before that tall frame settles onto the canvas beside her, and the other woman draws under the hoverbike as well to inspect the work she's been doing. It doesn't surprise her as much as when Moira takes up an omniwrench and starts to loosen bolts, presumably to finish taking off the vents and finish changing the air filters she had started working on.

"You know how to fix hoverbikes? And cook. And...all that medicine shit," Jack inquires then, more than a little impressed as she watches the other for a moment. Then, with a short laugh, "Is there anything you _can't_ do?"

It's matter of fact, the response, "I keep a motorcycle in Rialto, though it does not see much use these days. When the weather complies and there's sufficient time. I cannot imagine that this is much different."

A brief pause in which the vent is taken off, in which Moira shifts to the side to avoid dust and earth falling down onto her while the air filters are pulled out, definitely in need of changing, before the taller woman confesses in a drawl, "I have had little luck with the violin."

"Yeah, that's a no," Jack shoots back with a soft sound of amusement, casting a sidelong glance at the other woman to ensure that the filters are being replaced the correct way. They are. "You know, every time I think you couldn't possibly get _more attractive_ , you pull some shit like this. Fixing bikes. Italian motorcycles."

She doesn't miss the smug smile that crosses the other's lips at that. 

"Stop looking like you _know it_ , too," she teases thereafter, shifting over a scarce measure to brush a warm kiss to the other's cheek. She murmurs there, "You right shit."

With a little sound of mirth once more, Jack shifts back to get back to work, and confides, "And I was only brooding a little. I was talking to Akande on the comm earlier."

"Ah," the other woman confides, as if that alone spoke volumes. Taking up the wrench once more, which looks strange to her in one of those slender physician's hands, Moira starts to secure the bolts back into place, "He appraised you of your pending schedule, then."

"You could call it that," Jack answers begrudgingly. 

"It will not always be as such," comes the reply, a smear of oil apparent on one freckled cheekbone now, where it's dripped down from the bike and then been ineffectively wiped away. 

God, as if she wasn't smitten enough with this woman already. 

"I would have recommended the full five in Rialto, so that you may better acclimate to working with the team. Were there not pressing matters to tend with in my Ministry," Moira muses as if the other were simply talking about the weather. 

That voice holds a low lilt, as ever, as the taller woman confides, "It should be easier to accomplish our work with the titanium now that you will be reporting to me directly. Provided you can remain attentive to what you are doing. I would care to have it in the trial stages much sooner than later."

It takes a moment for that to register, before Jack simply laughs, countering simply, "What are you talking about?"

The slow blink of mismatched eyes at that should have told her enough. Perhaps the way a perfect brow arches slowly, but Moira simply emits a thoughtful hum at that, finishing with the air filters without any trouble. 

"Your temporary reassignment between Ministries, Jacqueline. To complete our medtech research more swiftly," comes a faintly exasperated response at that, "It was approved by the board in our...extended absence. Which I had perhaps foolishly assumed Akande had informed you of. I have also been assigned an additional intern and a Vishkar liaison."

Jack stops what she's doing for a second, laughs. Mulls it over for a minute before chuckling again, and then counters, "God, Bix is going to be in a _mood_ when I get back." Then, peering over at Moira, "Does that mean I'm sleeping with the boss, now?"

"Technically, Jacqueline," comes a smooth response from the taller woman at that, a hint of a smirk toying at the corner of the other's lips once more. "I have not ever _not_ been your superior within Oasis."

"Yeah, but that's a whole other Ministry, though," Jack drawls back with more than a little mischief. "It's a little different when it's sharing a workspace, even if it's only a few days." 

Clicking her tongue to the roof of her mouth lightly, she turns her head to look over at Moira and admits, "You're going to stop finding me charming if you have to put up with me that much."

"You will still be working primarily in the machine shop, if on the implant technology," the taller woman confirms matter-of-factly. 

"I..." Moira admits with a low chuckle thereafter, shaking her head slowly. Mismatched eyes touched with a spark of amusement, the taller woman confides, "Have every intention of purchasing you soundproof headphones and setting you up in the corner office, if you need a temporary workspace nearer by. If only to minimize your constant distractions in mine."

She can't help but laugh again at that, a sound that echoes faintly in the tin-walled garage. An impish smile crossing her features, Jack meets the other's gaze to confide, "You mention christening the desk _one time_..." Rolling her eyes slightly, she teases further, "Just because you were busy doesn't mean it was a bad idea."

"I am going to fire you inside the week," comes a low, lilting response, though one that holds a current of good humour.

Jack shoots a coy glance at the other, biting her lower lip purposefully before drawling out slowly, "You promise?"

" _Jacqueline_ ," Moira retorts, a low, altogether pleasant chuckle chasing after it. 

"Say my name like that again," Jack shoots back, dark eyes glittering with mirth, "See what happens."

With a mischievous grin at that, she nonetheless asks, "Who's the Vishkar? It's not that guy LaChance is always swanning about, is it? Abdel something?"

"Hardly," Moira answers back, elaborating as she slides back out from under the bike to check the gauges. "We will be working alongside Satya Vaswani. She comes highly recommended for her work with hardlight architecture."

That should be interesting, she muses. 

"That should about do it," Jack murmurs thoughtfully, pondering the work on the bike for a minute, and checking the replacement regulator once last time before she draws out from under it. "I'll find Barra, then you ready to head out?" 

There's a slow nod at that, the movement of a tall frame to find and secure the remainder of their luggage onto the back of the hoverbike. When she's said her goodbyes to her family, headed back out to the garage in preparation for their impromptu sojourn across the flats, Jack has to take a whole minute to cope with what waits for her there.

Largely, because six and a half feet of tall, lanky geneticist is leaning effortlessly against her hoverbike. Also, because with a smear of oil still on one freckled cheek, a little bit of red dust clinging to the shoulders of the scuffed leather jacket the other was gifted by Kamaka for the trip, the only Vargas tall enough to accommodate that, Moira O'Deorain is Junkertown fit in a way that she is not in any way prepared to cope with.

She's already calculating how long it will take them to get to the bunker, and how soon after that she can get that woman _out of that jacket_. Into her bunk, preferably. 

If that fucking insufferable smirk is any indication, the other woman is already _well aware_ of what effect that's having, and Jack opts to simply clear her throat softly and circle around toward the bike, intoning as she does, "You're fucking criminal."

She checks the luggage one last time, ensures that Barra - his head poking out of her military pack - is properly secured, before nodding slowly and moving to...Moira is in her seat. Moira is sitting in her seat, and is looking all the more smug for it.

"The fuck are you doing?" she asks with a laugh, dark eyes glittering as she meets the other's gaze.

"Driving," Moira responds smoothly, in a voice that's all smoke and velvet, coaxing in a way that's difficult to deal with when the taller woman is dressed like that. "Was that not obvious, rabbit?"

"Over my dead body are you driving," Jack counters with a thoughtful look over the other woman, her arms crossed over her chest and chin lifting in challenge of the statement. "That's my bike, babe."

"I found it, does that not make it mine?" comes the drawled response, and she's not sure at all what to do with the look in those mismatched eyes then. "Come here?"

She does, against her better judgment. It gets her chin caught betwixt long fingers, another set in the front of her jacket to draw her in nearer, until cool, soft lips meet hers. Drawn in further as the kiss deepens, becomes more insistent, more than a touch demanding in a way that makes it _hard_ to focus on anything else. 

When the other draws back, leaving her more than a little at a loss as to whether she wants to leave at all, or simply close the garage door for a while, there's a low murmur against the curve of her lips, "I'm driving, rabbit."

God.

She lets her drive.

\--- 

If you had asked her a week ago what the hardest part of being in Junkertown was, Jack would have had a very different answer than she does today. It would have been the distance. The radio silence that forced them apart for much longer than she would have liked. The omnics climbing up the wall. The Stonefish that breached the Junkertown wall. The destruction of her mecha. The near loss of her life. 

On the evening before their last day in Australia, nestled comfortably on a worn sofa in her bunker near the salt flats? Jack thinks that the hardest part of Junkertown might be knowing that she has to come back from it. Because as absolutely fucked as the last few weeks have been. As close as it was. As near it was to seize victory from the jaws of certain annihilation. These last few days she's almost forgotten what it was like before.

This? This is easy.

Riding out on the salt flats with Moira, watching the other take them over that sea of glittering white, the salt spray kicking up in an iridescent, shimmering cloud behind them. Finding the brief stretch of scrub that separates it from the ocean, where the bunker is hidden amidst the rocks. 

Spending their afternoons out in the shallows, no small amount of sunscreen applied to pale, freckled features so they can wade out into the tides, out amidst the rocks on the shoreline to catch prawns. Roasting them on a bonfire, tasting of salt and smoke and the sea. The way that smile cuts too easily, all sharp edges to cut her down to the bone. The husky laugh that turns a little wild around the edges. 

Fucking slow in a bed that she hasn't slept in in a year, one that still carries the scent of machine oil and cloves, citrus, salt, and the sea, with the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks, casting themselves to foam in the distance.

All these things are easy.

They come like second nature. Like breathing. An ebb and flow, give and take that she doesn't know how or when they settled into. But if she could keep Moira O'Deorain in Junkertown. Like this? She would. Unequivocally and without question. 

And a part of her knows that once they return to Oasis, the easy? That'll evaporate in some regards. Like smoke in the palm of her hand, snuffed out like a candle. Even if they'll be working together. That's work. She's not foolish enough to think that means anything that isn't serious. Moira in the lab. Weekends of conferences for the one, training in Rialto for the other. 

Jack finds herself wishing, as the week comes to a close, somewhat desperately in a way that she hasn't wanted anything in years, that this could last. Just a little longer. Another week. Another month. Two.

As long as it can.

Two applications of sunscreen over the course of a few hours haven't been enough to protect that lanky thing from getting a little pink around the ears, high on the cheekbones, the colour painting the nape of the neck and the lean curve of the shoulders in like kind. It's something that they've avoided thus far, but not this last day. So after a shower in the bunker, Jack finds herself seated on the couch with a tall scientist settled on the floor in front of her, that lean frame leaned back between her knees as she sets about applying a thin layer of aloe everywhere that sun-warmed colour has reached. 

"I'm going to have to invest in some industrial sunblock before you come out here next," Jack murmurs as she brushes a thin coating of the ointment onto the shell of a pink-tinged ear. "You burn easy."

There's a little scoff at that, the low and lilting assertion of, "It will heal soon enough." She doesn't need to see it to hear the smirk in that voice, "Perhaps, Jacqueline, it would be more prudent to stop letting Junkers pull me out into the Outback sun for hours on end."

"As if you've ever done anything that you didn't want to," Jack murmurs back amusedly, leaning forward to speak much closer to the other's ear. A curl to the corner of her lips, she flicks a sidelong look over those freckled features and leans a bit nearer.

"Do not," Moira pre-empts at her nearness, another little scoff sounding at the proximity of the other to her ear as if knowing without a word that she fully intended to nip it, sun-touched or not.

"You're no fun," Jack confides in turn, placing a light kiss to the other's cheek instead and letting it linger warmly. The skin is still a little over-warm at the cheekbone, and she can smell the salt air mingling with the citrus and mint of the taller woman's shampoo. "They ban that shit in Talon?"

"Mm?" comes a noncommittal sound from the other woman. 

"Fun," she clarifies with amusement, sinking back a measure to find the tin of aloe on the couch beside her. Dipping a measure more of the clear, cool ointment from the container, she uses her fingertips to spread it gently over the nape of the taller woman's neck. "Don't tell me your boy Bartholeme was the life of the party."

It's new territory. They haven't so much talked about the warehouse. She isn't sure, in fact, if that's something that they've been avoiding or just something that hasn't come up in conversation. 

"Bartholeme is not representative of the council as a whole," Moira answers lowly, a little vaguely. 

There's no protest when she slides her fingers beneath the strap of the other's tank-top to tend to a lean shoulder next, less when she tugs on the back of it and instructs, "Off."

Soft black fabric is pulled over the taller woman's head without a word at that, revealing a touch more pink staining those freckled shoulders than she'd care to see. There's a slight flinch at the coldness of the ointment when she starts to apply it this time.

"You always intend to pull me into the fold, or is that a happy accident?" Jack inquires next, voice smooth as she works. "Akande seemed like he'd wanted to. Pretty sure he's known that I knew for a while."

There's a low sound from the taller woman in front of her at that, Moira confiding without much pretense, "I would not be surprised, rabbit. Your work makes you a worthwhile asset to the organization. Though, I would think my intentions with you have been quite apparent."

"In any case, if you are concerned about...complications," the taller woman observes, forseeing where the conversation is going. "It should be manageable without much trouble. You are not wholly incapable of being professional when need be."

As if intent to prove the other wrong, Jack leans forward once more, draping her arms around the other's shoulders lightly and bringing her countenance even with a freckled one to counter in a soft murmur, "I bet I could fit under your desk."

There's a husky laugh at that, a little wild around the edges, before Moira turns to look at her as best she can, mismatched eyes holding a spark of mirth as the other muses, "You're a chancer."

"It's not _my_ fault you look so fit in that labcoat, alright?" Jack retorts with laughter in her voice, a mischievous smile curling the corner of her lips as she teases, "Maybe I'll write your mom a thank you note. It probably half her fault, yeah?"

It's comfortable. The way they spend their last night in Junkertown. It's needed. Something she wouldn't have anticipated when they first met. But it finds them nestled on the couch in the Salt Flats bunker, with the tall, lanky frame of the other woman sprawled atop her, those mismatched eyes half-closed as their day winds down. Those mismatched eyes half-closed, there's something soft about Moira O'Deorain in that moment. Legs comfortably twined together, and Moira's cheek nestled to her chest, those coppery lashes fluttering on occasion as Jack threads her fingers through the other's fiery hair. 

Naruto. Who would've thought, she thinks, glancing toward the nearby vidscreen with a vague amusement as another episode flicks on in the wake of the last. She slips her hands a little lower, lightly scraping the taller woman's scalp in the same languid motion, and hears the pleased little grunt that Moira emits against her shirt.

"I like that," the taller woman murmurs, exhaling slowly. 

"I'm gathering that," Jacqueline answers softly, fingertips light as she traces the curve of the other's ear. "Are you cool enough?"

Forgoing a blanket for a cool, crisp bedsheet would normally be something she balked at, but there's a faint sunburn to contend with, and she's well warm enough between the couch and the other nestled against her. 

"Mm," comes the response. She could spend the whole of the Outback spring like this. Just like this, the soft drone of the vidscreen in the background. The pleasant warmth of the taller woman in her arms, their cups of tea cooling on the nearby trunk they've been using as a coffee table. 

She's almost drifted off as well when the door clicks open. She feels that tall frame in her arms stiffen momentarily, and worries that it means the end of...whatever this is for the night. Instead, at the sound of muffled voices that she supposes must be familiar - she can pick out at least Akande's, if none other - Moira simply relaxes into her arms once more as if having decided that it isn't worth her time, coppery lashes slipping back closed as the she nestles her head between Jack's shoulder and neck. 

Strike team. That must be them, she imagines, managing a little wave for Akande when he steps in. The others, she doesn't think she'd recognize even if she were more awake, but it's difficult not falling asleep at current. Comfortable.

As she drifts off, she barely registers a hushed voice on the periphery as it announces, "Oh my god, _Gabe_. _Mira_."

Then nothing.


	31. think it's time i break my chains and run with the giants

When Jack agreed to let the Talon strike team use her bunker as their designated back-up safehouse outside of Junkertown, a remote location for them to shelter in if need be, she had to admit, this really wasn't what she expected. But it seems, as ever, that Talon is insistent on never quite fitting that mold for her. 

It's cold outside, or at least, cold relative to the balmy warmth of the spring day that proceeded it, and dressed in a soft t-shirt several sizes too tall for her and a pair of loose sleep shorts, her bare feet covered in damp sand as the tide starts to roll in around the rocks, she's starting to catch a little bit of a chill. Goosebumps run up the coppery skin of her arm as the breeze kicks up over the waves, and she licks her lips, tasting salt and stone on the air. 

Somewhere, she muses, in the central hub of the bunker, overtired from sun exposure and comfortably nestled within crisp, cool sheets on the couch, Moira O'Deorain is still asleep, that short, fiery hair in disarray and the persistent tinge of pink the sun left already fading from freckle-dusted features as genetic improvements tend to their work with relative ease. 

Another wave rolls in, and she fights the urge to step on a nearby rock to take her feet out of the surf. It's cold by comparison to the air, and she knows well enough what all lurks in the Outback at night, nerves starting to pick up as she scans over the dark, glassy water for any sign of a reflection. 

Because Moira O'Deorain is inside, sleeping peacefully through the still hours of morning before the sun has risen.

And Jack?

Well.

Jack is standing barefoot in the surf on the coastline, with a candy-coloured SMG not only pointed in her direction but also being used to occasionally gesture at her, as if punctuating the speech of the other woman out there with her. 

Because fuck coffee, right? This is clearly the best way to kickstart your morning. 

Cautious of making sudden movements, Jack rubs a little sand from the corner of her eye with the heel of her hand and fights back a yawn, wishing she was back where her morning started. Comfortably entwined with a lanky, warm body on the sofa, where it felt as safe as Junkertown ever really does. 

Somewhere...there he is. Barra is frolicking around amidst the rocks, occasionally stopping to pounce at a bit of froth in the water as it recedes only to dart back up toward the shore when it rolls in, his white paws caked with damp sand and tongue lolling from his muzzle.

Still, this isn't the worst morning she's spent in Junkertown. No, that award belongs somewhere in a different bunker outside the omnium, listening to the sound of solar wire sparking and the scent of hot metal start to carry as they fire it up. She tries not to think about it. This is definitely not that bad.

Jack would, in fact, be taking this all much more seriously if she wasn't at least ninety percent certain that Akande wasn't about to let one of his operatives _actually_ put a bullet in her. Not that she's all that certain that he even _knows_ that the colourful, talkative girl she saw in passing earlier in the evening intended to put a gun to the back of her head when she opened the bunker doors to let Barra out in the middle of the night, and then march her out onto the coastline for a little early morning chat. 

With the way that the other woman...Olivia? She's fairly certain that the blue Frenchwoman down the coast a little ways called this one Olivia. Anyway. With the way that Olivia is animatedly gesturing at her with the gun now, Jack is almost tempted to reach out and try to take it from her. It's something she'd absolutely do if she wasn't also fairly sure that the tall, blue sniper looking bored not far away from them wouldn't take exception to that. And she knows that's Widowmaker.

Just like she knows you don't get a callsign like _Widowmaker_ for being extra friendly. 

She wraps her arms around herself more firmly, fighting down a shiver as the breeze picks up again. 

"Now, _mija_ ," Olivia intones slowly, one gloved and sharp-nailed hand coming to rest upon her shoulder and the other continuing to punctuate the words with an idle gesture of the weapon. "No need to be worried, mm? I just wanted to have a friendly conversation with you about our favorite medical professional. Es bueno?"

Great. Superb. God, she's fucking tired and wants to be back on the couch. Usually, when Barra decides that he absolutely must go outside in the early morning, it's a relatively brief adventure followed by her return to bed, and she burrows under the blankets to sleep until much later on. She's not even sure what fucking time it is right now.

There's a small part of her, in fact, that hasn't entirely ruled out that the radiation filters may have failed and that this whole interaction, from the dingo pup pouncing on a dead snake near the edge of the surf to the waving SMG occasionally in her periphery and the rapid-fire conversation that she's barely listening to, may just be an indication that her brain is actively melting in her skull. But it's early yet. And how the fuck is Widowmaker so fucking _blue_ anyway? Purple? Blue, she thinks, but it's difficult to tell in the lack of light. 

" _Estas prestando atención?_ " is the question she tunes back in to, mostly because the barrel of the gun presses lightly into her cheek to turn her head back toward the shorter woman. Not much shorter, mind. But it's nice to be taller than literally _anyone_.  
** Are you paying attention?

"Yeah. I'm not very good at that," Jack answers slowly, fighting down a yawn and rubbing her arms briskly as she lifts a chin toward the bunker. "Ask Moira." As another wave rolls in around her feet, she follows with, "Can we go back the fuck inside already? I'm fucking freezing, mate."

" _¿Es en serio?_ " is what follows thereafter, the shorter woman actually tipping her head back to look at the sky with the most vibrantly violet-blue eyes that she's ever seen. There's an exaggerated sigh before Olivia continues, "Did you really miss...all of that?"  
** Are you serious?

Fuck it. She can shoot her if she wants.

Jack moves a few steps in toward the beach, feeling more than a little thankful at not being ankle-deep in water anymore, and then stops there, arms still folded.

"I caught _medical professional_ ," she muses idly, scratching lightly at the back of her neck and wishing that she was wearing a thicker shirt. "But I'm also real tired. And not keen to stand out on the shore in the dark when there's crocs around. They get pretty active at night, mate."

It's still dark out, nothing but the stars and a hint of silvery light from the crescent moon for them to see by, and she doesn't like the set of eyes she sees in the tidal pool down the way _at all_.

"What's even the point of preparing a monologue if you aren't going to listen to it?" the shorter woman asks with seeming exasperation, a hand planting on one hip with the question. Those violet-blue eyes narrow briefly before Olivia follows with, "What do you mean crocs?"

Ignoring the brightly-coloured gun for a moment, Jack nods toward the tidepool once more, the reflection of eyes still therein. She points out simply, "Saltwater crocodile."

" _Bueno_ ," Olivia responds with the same hint of exasperation. She stays stock still when the muzzle of the SMG digs beneath her chin once more, pushing her head up slightly, dark eyes settled on violet-blue and reading the absolute seriousness in them as the shorter woman tells her, "We'll keep this quick then, _amiga_. Pay attention."

The other's countenance draws nearer, so near that she thinks their eyelashes might touch if it were any closer, "There's nowhere you can hide from me, _mija_. No secret of yours I can't find if I look hard enough. Me and Widow? We are _very protective_ of our _tia_ , _comprende_?"

" _Mira_ ," Olivia's hand lifts at that, a holoscreen flickering to life from seemingly nowhere. The glove, she recognizes, probably projected out of the glove. She wishes that her mind could stop focusing on the semantics of that and maybe on the _fucking gun pressed under her jaw instead_ , but soon enough the holoscreen is all she can focus on.

The screens that flicker by at a rapid speed are... _fuck_. If any semblance of weariness still lingered in her bones, the veil of sleep is lifted at the candid shots of her brother at university. The twins in the Outback. A list of her mother's terrorist charges. Her father on the farms with Jae, with Mako, with Jamie. Enough documentation to incriminate not only her in the fire at the warehouse, but also to ensure that her father, her brothers, herself, join her mother on the terror watchlist. 

This is different than Overwatch. Overwatch didn't have shit. Olivia _does_.

When Jack looks up from the screens, dark eyes meeting violet-blue once more, hers narrow faintly. She can feel a tension in her jaw, see the faint twitch to the corner of the other woman's lips. 

"You fuck her? We fuck _you_ ," the shorter woman sounds out, blowing a strand of ombre hair out of her own face before pressing the gun just a little further into her chin in emphasis. Gloved fingers snap once, and Olivia intones simply, "Widow?"

Shimmering golden eyes shift from the distant tidepool toward her, Widowmaker reciting in a bored cadence, as if coached to speak the words that fall in a silken smooth, accented lilt, "One shot, one kill."

" _Tú comprende?_ " Olivia asks simply, searching her gaze for a second.

This is a lot to fucking proces before the sun rises. So she swallows slowly, clears her throat, looks from the sniper to the shorter woman before her.

Jack lifts her chin in a nod, answers in as smooth a voice as she can manage, "I hear you. I got you loud and fucking clear, mate."

A neon-tinted, blue- and pink-gloved hand pats her on the cheek lightly at that, then withdraws, the SMG thankfully soon following. The gun is tucked back into a holster at her own waist, before the shorter woman announces in a chipper tone, altogether too nonchalant for having just shown her the groundwork for ruining her entire life if provoked, " _Es perfecto_. We're going to be good friends, _mija_. Just you watch."

"I..." Jack starts to say, then simply blinks slowly as an arm loops through hers, draws her back toward the bunker. "Right. Who the fuck _are you_?"

There's a mischievous smile at that, one that most definitely reaches the depths of those violet-blue eyes as the other responds, "The Sombra Collective."

She blinks slowly at the follow-up question of, "Show me where you keep the snacks?"

It's not much. Instant coffee and pre-packaged snacks, either vastly too sweet or too salty for Moira's tastes. Junker kryptonite, in that it's packaged food that lasts ages and doesn't come in a tin. She leaves them behind in the kitchen afterwards, Olivia seeming pleased as punch despite her sniper compatriot's obvious chagrin at the quality of food available. 

Far colder and by far less content than she would care to be, Jack makes her way back toward the couch at a slow, measured pace, settling on the edge of it to rake a hand through her hair. One minute. Two. She counts to ten with the soft tapping of her fingertips to the side of her leg, seeking clarity and the focusing of her scattered thoughts. On the third repetition, a warm hand rests fingertips to the small of her back, the thumb stroking there in a gentle half-circle. 

When she glances over her shoulder, the tall woman sprawled there is still half-asleep, if she were betting. Coppery hair splayed over a threadbare pillow, Moira is relaxed, peaceful in a way rarely afforded to them. Stolen in moments. Here, in the dark, the scattering of freckles on those sculpted features is only just visible, the hint of pink having faded from sharp cheekbones like she knew it would, far sooner than is natural. A sliver of sapphire and scarlet, the other's eyes are only just open, and at that arm curving around her instead, pulling slightly, Jack complies with the unspoken intention there. 

So she shifts from where she is, from seated on the couch to settled sprawled alongside the other, but curls inward, toward Moira as that arm draws snugly around her instead. Nuzzling her face into the crook of the other's shoulder and neck, Jack exhales slowly, a contented sound escaping her. This is better.

Yeah.

This is much better. 

\---

Sitting on the transport beside the taller woman as it circles down toward Rialto, Jack bounces her leg restlessly, trying to ignore the fact that inside of ten minutes, Moira will be on another transport headed off for Oasis at long last. She'll be remaining in Italy for three days, acclimating to her new schedule and working with the team. And as much as she meant it when she said she wanted in, the nerves are starting to settle in. 

Both for her inevitable return to Oasis in three days, to her roommates who have to be wondering what the fuck happened that she just up and disappeared with no comm chatter prior. Or at least Bix. There's no way that Chance and Gal don't have some idea she's been in Junkertown, or at least an inkling of what the _emergency_ was, though she's certain that they'll attribute it to the Stonefish and not being tortured in a Talon warehouse before being forced into impromptu exile.

Bix? Bix is going to be pissed, and she isn't looking forward to it. 

Much as Jack isn't looking forward to the tall, lanky woman beside her being occupied wholly with the lab and the Ministries in the near future. Especially not after the two weeks squandered in one another's company. That's the thing. She has an idea of _how good it can get_ now, and lazy Outback afternoons on the oceanside, hunting for prawns, reading, sprawled sunburnt on the couch and watching shit anime?

It had been pretty fucking good.

Her return to Oasis will also mean advanced radiation testing, which she isn't thrilled about, regardless of the doctor involved. Sure, it's for the best. But she's seen some of the shit that the levels of radiation she's been exposed to can do to a person, and while no one in Junkertown had access to the Oasis labs or a woman who can literally heal with a touch, one hand giving, the other taking, there's a lingering concern there that she can't quite shake. 

Probably not helped by Moira's impromptu questionnaires about how she's feeling and what symptoms she's experiencing and how they've occurred every three days on the spot. But you know. The little things. 

They're setting down now, the canal-side coming into view near the back of Talon H.Q., and she fucking hates it. Hates it more than she wants to mention. Probably more than is healthy, given that she's only been seeing this woman for a few months now. The nerves are worse, her leg jittering as she hears the hum of the transport slow, the subtle jostling as they touch down, the transport making contact with the sun-warmed stone outside. 

And then begins the slow getting ready to disembark.

_Fuck_.

She rises to her feet, catches up her military bag to sling it over her shoulder, and stands in the near-emptied transport for several seconds once the rest have disembarked. When she turns at the touch of warm fingertips to her shoulder, Moira is beside her, looks as if about to say something. Jack's eyes flick over the other's freckled countenance, both wanting and not wanting to hear whatever it may be. They've had the last two weeks to talk. This is an eventuality that they've touched on, however brief, however begrudging.

So Jack settles, as she so often does, on what she wants to do rather than what she _should_ do. And what she wants to do is wrap her fingers in the collar of a sharply-pressed black shirt and pull down, hearing the low half-beat of a chuckle before the cool, soft curve of Moira's lips meets hers, slightly chapped from their time in the Outback. She leans up into it. It's warm, fierce, lingers far longer than it should with the knowledge that the transport needs to lift off soon.

It isn't a gentle goodbye, but ends as all things in Junkertown should.

With a fucking bang.

There's a sharp nip to her upper lip at the end of it, one that she reciprocates in like kind, hand still wrapped in the front of the other's shirt as a wolf-whistle rings out from near the entrance to the transport. Olivia. Glancing up through dark lashes, her night-dark eyes settle to mismatched and find them exactly how she likes them. Vivid, their rim of colour less than it was before. 

"Don't forget me in Oasis," Jack intones smoothly, tilting up slightly once more, her nose brushing to the other's freckled before she places a second, last, far more chaste kiss to the curve of the other's lips.

There's little danger of that if the look on those angular features is any indication, a low, lilt of, " _Slán agat_ , rabbit. I will see you in three days."  
** Goodbye

Winking one dark eye as she settles flat on her feet once more, Jack takes a moment to straighten the taller woman's collar, smoothing the front of that shirt with her fingertips before she inclines her head in a slight nod. Her footsteps seem loud as she descends the ramp, Barra hot on her heels as they step out into the early afternoon sun.

\---

"Get up, Rook," Reyes orders in a resonating rasp, the dull crimson of his eyes taking on a subtle glow as he circles around her on the mat, shadows seeming to wick off his skin like errant wisps of smoke. Not exactly what she thought he'd look like under the mask, ashen-brown skin carrying more than a few scars, the most prominent of which cuts from the bridge of his nose down along his cheek, nearly reaching the jaw.

But she can see the hallmarks of the man she's seen in a picture once. Not in Moira's office, no, but the one in the study in the other's Oasis home. Their arms slung around one another, dressed in all black, one with fiery hair falling into her eyes and the other noticeably shorter and grinning from ear to ear. She wouldn't have guessed at a glance that it was a Blackwatch photo, but here they are, and here he is, all intense brows and shadow, eyes dimly lit with crimson like a flame seen through dark glass. 

She's lost count of how many times she's hit the mat today, and the sheer force of the last collision with it has her coughing, the air knocked clean out her lungs. 

There's no two ways about it.

Reyes is infinitely worse than Akande.

Akande takes to their sparring sessions with the air of a warrior. A comrade, one who tests and feints and finds a certain joy in the art of battle, even when it's as self-contained as it is here. 

Reyes? Reyes is a goddamn drill instructor from hell.

And every time she fucks up, there's another fucking drill. The last one was crawling across the gymnasium floor on her elbows, back and forth, until she's pretty sure that she'll never feel anything in her elbows again. Push-ups. Running laps. Pull-ups until she fell off the fucking bar, and then he made her run again for fucking _that up_.

Standard, Akande says. 

She really doubts it.

She's still not certain what Reyes meant when he told Ogundimu, "If I can train McCree, I can train a Junker," but she's pretty sure that it doesn't bode all that well for her.

There isn't a single part of her that doesn't feel sore right now, either deep in the muscle or from the bruises she's certain mark her coppery skin beneath the black t-shirt and shorts she's training in. She can already see some on her arms, a particularly deep purple on the side of her knee when she missed the mat once. 

It's harder to imagine that she was every _not_ sweaty. It's dripping into her eyes, damp in her hair, caught in a sheen over coppery, bruised skin as she takes too long to get up and jerks back from an incoming boot, wrapping her legs around his and pivoting him toward the floor.

Bad move. 

Reyes is a goddamn monster. When she can't capture a hold from the way he's twisted, the grapple is almost immediate. Face pressed into the hardwood instead of the mat this time, Jack uses the one arm that isn't twisted behind her at a painful angle to tap out as fast as fucking possible given how much that _fucking hurts_.

He doesn't even look winded.

Maybe that's the benefit of being a genetically engineered super soldier who turns into a _fucking ghost, Reyes_. Wearing a soft grey hoodie and track pants, he could just be lazily going to the door to get the paper in the morning for all the effort it seems like he's expended.

"Ten laps," the directive falls easily from his lips, and she can't help but swear lowly under her breath. 

"Fuck, mate," Jack all but breathes out, hands finding the mat so she can slowly push up from it, feeling the steady ache in her arms all the more prominently for it. 

"Fifteen," he counters at that, and she could swear there's a hint of a grin at the corner of his mouth at that. "Get running."

Bracing her palms on her knees for a moment as she catches her breath, Jack blows a strand out hair out of her eyes with a puff of breath, then uses both hands to flip the man off as she straightens up. _Where the fuck is her water bottle_?

"Twenty," Reyes rasps out. He's definitely grinning now, mirth in the dull crimson glow of his eyes as the expression pulls at the scar on his cheek. 

"Oh, fuck off," Jack retorts at that, moving toward the bleachers to sit on the lowest one and catch up her water bottle. Taking a deep swig from it, she tries to catch her breath, another modest draught from the bottle taken before she counters, "I'm not running twenty fucking laps, mate. You can fuck right off back to Halloween town with that shit."

His chuckle at that is a resonating, raspy sound that seems to echo from all around him, and what hints of shadow she can see here and there flicker with the reverberations of it. What she doesn't quite expect is for Reyes to come over and yank her up out of her seat by the front of the shirt, then shove her toward the training mat. 

"Options are - run your twenty laps or get your ass kicked and then run your twenty laps," Reyes informs hoarsely.

Jack barely has time to react before he crosses back in, the water bottle clattering to the ground as he clips her jaw with a heavy, underhanded blow that rattles her teeth and makes her see sparks. It makes her stumble and he's quick to press the advantage, grappling around her and throwing her back down onto the mat hard enough that the wind drives out of her all at once again. 

Tasting copper on the backs of her teeth, her dark gaze swimming with stars, Jack snaps, a wire drawn too taut until the centre cannot hold. It dredges something up and out of her that remembers the sound of solar wire heating, of burning metal, blood hissing as it evaporates on contact. When she levers up to her feet, wiping a bit of blood from her nose onto the back of her hand, Reyes is picking up the waterbottle, screwing the cap back on as if nothing happened.

When she collides with his back, he seems surprised, more so when her arm locks up and under his jaw, holding on as her knuckles collide with the side of his face, once, twice, almost three times before he throws her bodily over his broad shoulders and onto the hardwood floor this time _and that fucking hurts_.

It devolves into a scrap. And Jack knows how to scrap, knows where to dig elbows and slam knees. Knows how to hit where it'll hurt and does. When he twists her arm violently, hard enough that she feels something pull that shouldn't, the Junker slams her head into his nose. Something cracks. Black blood hits the wood below. She knows because her cheekbone bounces off the floor a few seconds later, however the fuck much he weights landing on her back before a muscular arm wraps around her neck to cut off the air supply while she contorts and attempts to twist out from under him.

This time, Jack doesn't tap. It would be the smart thing, to be certain. Instead, her vision leaves her in increments. Grey around the edges. Then black. Then nothing.

She runs thirty-five laps before Reyes takes her to lunch.

It's a short walk from the base in Rialto, still in their gym clothes. Albeit one that necessitates a brief visit to the onsite medic to contend with her sprained arm and his broken nose. Not what she expected. If it were Moira, they would have stopped for Japanese. Akande? Something green, healthy.

Reyes? He takes her to a burger joint. As they settle into a corner booth with a tray full of burgers wrapped in greasy paper and crisp, golden chips fresh from the fryer, Jack is in danger of starting to like him. At least until he starts nicking her chips.

It's funny in some regards. Never in a million years would she have imagined that one day she'd be sitting across the table from Talon's Reaper, wolfing down a cheeseburger while he steals another chip from a small paper sack of them in the middle of the tray. Briefly, she wonders if they're being watched, if the same Overwatch operatives are taking clandestine photos of them that captured some of her and Moira in Rialto some months back. There's a small part of her that hopes so. _Eat your fucking heart out, Soldier_.

The hood of his grey sweater pulled up, likely to mask at least a measure of his unorthodox appearance, Reyes seems little worse for wear. Almost as if they hadn't just had a drawn-out slug-fest on the floor of the gymnasium. 

Rolling up his sleeves a bit before he unwraps his burger, Reyes pauses of a sudden and pivots his wrist to show a dark crescent of bruise on the underside of it, his raspy voice a touch amused as he observes, "You bit me."

After a few seconds of silence, necessitated by a mouthful of cheeseburger, Jack takes a sip of NanoCola and answers, "That'll happen, mate."

"I should've made your sorry ass run fifty laps," he counters drily, reaching out for another chip and absolutely slathering it in ketchup before he eats it.

Reaching across the table, she flicks the bruise lightly, flippantly, and then intones, "Stop stealing my chips."

"Fries. And I paid for them," Reyes answers as he crunches through another one, casually in a way that makes her think he's done this more than a thousand times before. "We could head back to base if you want. I'm sure Akande has a protein shake in the fridge with your name on it. Bet it looks like sludge."

She makes an impressive face at that, nose wrinkling at him as she takes a chip for herself. That was every fucking meal yesterday, and she's already done with it. It's a far cry from the beans and toast, processed, meal-from-a-can Junkertown, but entirely too far in the other direction. Plus, she's rather fond of chips. She doesn't even know what Akande puts in the fucking things, save for that they taste excessively of green shit and dirt, and there's no sugar in the kitchen to sweeten them with because it's _bad for your health_.

"And to think I was just starting to like you," Jack shoots back with a half-smile, in good humour for the moment. Sliding toward the edge of the booth, she asks, "I'm getting a milkshake. You want one?"

"Chocolate. With bacon," Reyes answers in a raspy timbre, tipping out the rest of her fries on the tray to pick through them. "And get me more fries while you're up there."

Jack snorts softly at that, countering with the sound, "Chips," before she jumps up to head toward the counter, hands tucking into the pockets of her hoodie. She ends up ordering the chips, the shakes, and two more burgers to hide in the back of the fridge for later. Akande probably has a fresh round of _sludge_ prepared for her in addition to an entire arsenal of vitamins, all intended to get her into _condition_. 

She suspects, given the frequency with which she's receiving messages from her favourite doctor about _did she take her vitamins_ that there's a little more to it, but she's not sure she wants to scratch the surface of that yet. Maybe later. Maybe an answer for an answer, when there's more time and she's not getting her teeth kicked in every couple of hours to see how she holds up to it.

Heading back to the table, she slides the milkshake over to Reyes, taking a sip of her own. It's oversweet, has cookies crumbled into the vanilla of the icecream. It's definitely not a protein shake.

"So. You always get saddled with kicking the shit out of the new recruits?" Jack asks, watching with a sort of mild fascination as her compatriot opens the top of his own beverage, starting to dip chips into it and eat them that way instead of with ketchup.

Okay, so maybe her eating habits aren't the worst. Score.

"Yeah. The special cases," he rasps back, and when his ashen-brown hand reaches for one of her burgers, Jack lifts a fork and arches a brow in challenge. He meets her gaze without hesitation and takes it anyways, and she sighs as she drops the fork onto the tray with a clatter, sinking back into her seat with a sigh. "You. Liv. The ones that have a hard time playing nice with others."

She makes a face at him at that, takes another pull from her milkshake. She's absolutely going to get brainfreeze. It might be worth it at this point. Jack counters anyways, "I work _fine_ with others."

"Yeah, sure you do," Reyes answers back around a mouthful of her burger, a snort sounding from him in turn. Wiping his face with the back of his hand, he intones bluntly, "That's what all the shit recruits say."

"I can scrap," Jack points out after another drink, lifting her chin slightly as if in challenge.

"Getting your cocky ass choked out on the floor isn't a skill," he answers back no less bluntly, dull crimson eyes meeting hers over another bite of her burger. Chewing for a moment, he swallows, then takes a sip from his milkshake before pointing out, "It means you'd take a bullet in the field. Then we're what, Rook? A man down, trying to recover your sorry ass _if_ there's enough of it left to patch up."

"That's best case scenario," he has the gall to point the burger at her and intone further, "You should have gotten pickles."

"Yeah, and you're a motherfucker," Jack retorts smoothly, another little snort of amusement sounding from her. Her shoulders are starting to feel a little stiff the longer they sit, and she shifts uncomfortably before settling once more. "We aren't all super soldiers, turning into ghosts and bats and shit, you know."

There's that grin again, one that carries to the dim gleam of his eyes. 

"Not yet," Reyes replies in that raspy, resonant voice. "Not with that attitude."

He's nicking fries again.

Fucking hell.

She's starting to like Reyes.

\--- 

After another three days, extended when Akande decided that it needed to be, of drills, exercises, intense sparring, and a fucking heart attack-inducing lesson from Widowmaker on how to assemble and then fire a rifle in all of fucking ten seconds, Jack is beyond sore. It didn't help that her one break from Reyes and his drill instructor-esque military torture had coincided with Akande's _fucking lunch break_ , which he spent trying to teach her how to grapple Reyes, who was only all too happy to keep reintroducing her face to the training mat down in the gym. 

She's stiff beyond belief. Her joints ache. To be honest, everything fucking aches, a soreness that seems rooted in every movement and manuever of her slim frame, which lives deep in the centre of every muscle. One that the aspirin that she took with her battery of morning vitamins hasn't even started to touch. 

Maybe that's part of how she ended up doing shots of sambuca with Sombra in the kitchen on her last night in Rialto. It certainly didn't hurt that it tasted like licorice, in any case. Better than the moonshine in Junkertown. She's hoping, making her way slowly down the hallway from the showers toward her assigned bunk, that it doesn't lead to the same sort of hangover.

Because she's well on her way into buzzed at the moment, and while she's not that much less sore for it, she is fairly pleasantly warm. And isn't certain she'd like to spend her first morning on the way back to Oasis with a splitting headache. Water. She'll drink her water bottle. It'll be fine. _Fine_.

There's a dull ache in her elbows at the moment, their coppery surface mottled with blues and purples from where she mised the mat once, earlier in the day. Jack suspects that it'll be worse tomorrow. Knows it. The day after is always worse, more stiff, more sore, and it's not as if they've gone easy on her. Or if this is easy? She doesn't want to know what hard is. In Junkertown, the scraps are out of necessity, quick and brutal, sloppy by comparison. It's less finely tuned machine and more juggernaut, requires less precision than Ogundimu demands of her.

It's different than Junkertown, she muses once more to herself, tapping her keycard on the door and missing once, twice, before deciding that she's definitely going to be hungover tomorrow when she drops it and has to bend to pick it up, then succeeds in unlocking the door. Room 303, Talon HQ, Rialto. Her home away from home. 

The towel, she drops into a bin near the door, raking her hand through damp hair afterwards. Her comm, she tosses onto the pillow, only a few seconds before she simply strips out of her dark, damp-mottled t-shirt, joggers, and underwear and simply throws them onto the desk, a disgruntled sound escaping her as she stretches slowly and feels something in the vicinity of her spine _pop_ loudly. 

It takes her less than a minute to burrow into her bunk, into cool, soft sheets and a warm blanket, and onto what is, comparative to what was available in her bunker, a very comfortable mattress. The pillow feels like heaven when her head hits it, and it's not long before she feels something jostle against the side of the bed, Barra rubbing his side along the length of it before he hops up behind her and curls in a tight ball of tawny fur, pressed behind her shoulders.

When a wet nose touches the back of one of them, Jack swears lowly, turns to murmur, "Stop it, you fuck."

His tail thumps against the blankets. 

Her fingers find the comm as if by rote, and she scrolls through the day's messages before selecting a familiar contact from them, nestling into the blankets and pillows further as she awaits the connection through. Hoping that the other woman will still be up.

When the vidscreen flickers to life, Jack shifts a bit, pulling the second pillow closer so that she can prop her chin upon it and draw the blankets up around her bare shoulders a little further. She's aware that the backdrop of the room is nothing but darkness, the lights out, and her countenance illuminated only by the pale blue of the screen. 

A half-smile curls the corner of her lips as Moira appears on the other end of the line. The geneticist looks as tired as she feels, but still answers, freckled features similarly illuminated in the faint blue of the vidscreen. It renders the taller woman in near-monochrome, one wine-dark eye an the other blue, looking almost black in the dim light, the exception. 

She watches with a dim satisfaction the slow, languid stretch, the checking of a watch in the similarly dark room that Moira is in. Her laboratory office, Jack realizes on spotting the art above the back of the couch. Probably a nap between trial runs, if the loosened tie and wrinkled labcoat are any indication. 

"You're in bed," Moira seems a bit surprised by that, coppery hair falling into mismatched eyes, a pair of black-rimmed spectacles perched austerely on a freckled nose. 

"Mm. Yeah," Jack answers smoothly, unable to fight the way the corner of her lips curls as she watches the other woman push up spectacles, attempt to smooth the front of a button-down shirt. She confides warmly, "I wanted to talk to you before I fell asleep."

There's a softening around the corners of those mismatched eyes. One that she has to look for to know is there. They watch each other in a sort of fond silence for a while before Moira requests with a low lilt, familiar, "Tell me what you're thinking, rabbit."

Dark eyes half-lid, Jack watches those sculpted features a second longer before answering languidly, "That you look cute as fuck in glasses." The corner of her lips curls mischievously, and she lifts one hand to display her pointer finger and thumb, held slightly apart, "That I'm maybe a little buzzed."

Then, with no less sincerity, "That I wish you were here."

She picks up the comm, points it at the space beside her on the bed, "Maybe right...here."

There's a current of amusement in that low lilt now, mismatched eyes reflecting it as the taller woman observes, "That makes two of us, Jacqueline. Who were you drinking with?"

"Liv and Reyes. We played _Never have I ever_ ," Jack answers smoothly, unable to keep the mischievous smile from her lips now. "It was real bad. I kept all your secrets. I had to drink a right bit for it. Liv is sneaky."

She pantomimes locking her lips and throwing away the key.

"Sambuca is terrible," she adds conversationally, dark eyes warm as they hold a mismatched gaze. "The company here is worse. You should come make it better." There's a brief pause, before she asks, "How is Oasis?"

"Tedious," comes the answer, certain of that fact. There's a sharpness to those eyes for an instant, though it soon fades, and she watches Moira settle back on the couch, lean shoulders sinking into the cushions as they speak. "Much of it has been a waste of my time and talents, but necessary for maintaining the status quo, so to speak."

There's another pause, a brief concession, "I find the company similarly lacking. Particularly at night."

That resonates with her in a way she didn't think it would. Two weeks in Junkertown. Three days apart. She had been getting used to falling asleep next to that tall frame, tired, smelling of sun and salt air. 

Jack bites her lower lip lightly, dark eyes holding mismatched for an instant before she intones, "Where are you sleeping tomorrow? I could come down to the lab if it's busy."

It dances in the back of her mind and she can't not say it, the corner of her lips curling cheekily as she drawls out, "Read you a bedtime story and everything."

There's a low chuckle at that.

There's a lot of things that they don't say in the space between the comm chiming and Jack falling asleep, the vidscreen still on and Moira's voice a low, pleasant lilt on the other end, for a time even after she's fallen asleep. Ones that she thinks anyways. 

That she's starting to hate sleeping alone.

That she'd trade her left arm to go back to Junkertown for another week, a day, a few hours. 

When it's clear that she's drifted off, swept away into the dark to dream away the trials of the day, Moira remains on the line for several minutes, watches her in silence until she's summoned away by the soft sound of labwork needing attention. Long fingers linger on the button that would terminate the call, don't hit it until a low, whiskey and smoke has had opportunity to confide, "Goodnight, rabbit. _Airím uaim thú_."  
** I miss you

If she were not dead to the world. Perhaps if she understood more than a word of Gaeilge herself, the answer to that would be easy.

_I miss you, too_.


	32. lipstick on your t-shirt, every shade i didn't buy

Working for Talon is a monstrous affair.

Nestled in her bed, safely sheltered in her Oasis apartment as she picks away at schematics on a datapad, Jacqueline Vargas would venture that Talon is not monstrous for the reasons one would expect. Her training certainly isn't a nine to five of kicking puppies and committing atrocities, as she imagines much of the world would likely think. At least Overwatch, if their continued recruitment efforts - of late in the form of messages she has to forward to Sombra - is any indication. 

There's an impudent part of her that thinks, muscles aching still and a dull throbbing in her shoulder, that maybe she should just sign up. Wonders with tired eyes if it will get her out of another three days of being beaten into the ground in Rialto, or the three that follow after, working eighteen hour days on medtech between the Genetics lab and the machine shop.

It wouldn't be a worthwhile distraction. Even if it meant she might get knuckles after that soldier again. 

Right now it's the last day of her week. The one that's supposed to be downtime.

She's not sure downtime is a thing that exists in her reality any longer.

If recent history is any indication, a lucky day off involves falling asleep on the couch in Moira's office because it's the only place they've had time to meet up, order quick takeout and maybe steal a quick kiss before they both have to jump headlong back into a hundred fires demanding their attention. If she's not lucky, her day off is a missed call or a missed message, a brief conversation before one or the other of them has to go. Or worse. Nothing.

Full momentum on a bad day? That was last week. A juggernaut that crashed into the proverbial sun when her Rialto time bled over into a mandated excursion to Junkertown, and she doubled down, working long days in the Outback sun on the relief effort, and well into the night with her eyes burning, bent over a holoscreen to try to resolve the remaining issues with her medical implant schematics. 

Where she is now, save for the bruised feeling in her shoulder, she could almost forget it. But with the forces pulling them both in every which way lately, it honestly comes as a surprise that at one in the afternoon on a Sunday, she even has a spare moment to just fucking _breathe_.

LaChance and Galveston are off, have taken Barra off to the dog park. Chance had a dingo when he was younger, and every time he has the opportunity to run their newest addition around, he jumps on it. She's thankful for it. Her time is stretched so thin it seems an inevitability that it will snap. Likely sooner than later. For now, however, she's not entirely willing to get out of bed if she can avoid doing so. 

For one, it's cold as fuck. With as many spare blankets as she could find heaped overtop of her, bundled snugly around her slim frame, Jack still barely feels warm. The occasional draft that ekes around the window frame raises goosebumps. She's considering buying a space heater, which she didn't think would ever be an eventuality in the fucking desert. Some measure of it wonders if it's to do with her recent injury, or perhaps the radiation treatments that her favorite geneticist has her doing after _not liking her charts_ , or if it's just that the miserable bastards in the Ministry of Meteorology are still tickled that they found a way to artificially engineer winter in the middle of the fucking desert and are having a field day. 

That last one? Definitely her least favorite thing about Oasis at the moment. Junkers aren't built for this bullshit, and the adjustment from the summer heat of the Outback to the cool, crisp, just short of snow in Oasis is not-so-slowly driving her insane. It's also making her shoulder stiff in a way that she doesn't like. 

So she shifts onto the other side to get more comfortable, nestling her cheek back atop the pillow before her fingertips dance over the datapad once more. There are still far too many variables to the medical implant she's designing. Three critical sections in the adjusted framework that just, against all odds and all efforts, refuse to cooperate the way that they should. It's too many to be worth running a cast of the implant to test on, especially with the extreme limitations on the alloy at current. Not yet. Even if she's not sure that they can narrow down the faults without it. 

She has ideas about how to resolve that, but Moira isn't going to like that. _Especially_ after last week.

It needs so much streamlining before she can risk running it through the shop that she could scream. Getting more titanium would help. Make it a risk worth taking, if she could walk out of the Omnium with her life. And the longer that she works on it, the more minutes and hours she could be spending with O'Deorain instead of huddled alone in the dark, tapping away at a schematic design, the more Jack imagines that maybe, just maybe, climbing back into a fucking Stonefish would be worth it. Help her untangle whatever fucking mystery is evading her right now.

The closest she's been to a complete design is two critical failures, which she'd had to backtrack after showing Moira. It was stable for less than three minutes, after which the entire schematic suffered catastrophic failure and went red. Then, they'd had to have a very calm, very cooly clinical conversation about the impact of mass tissue necrosis and its potential combat applications. Jack hadn't missed the gleam in Moira's eye at the result, even if it wasn't the result she was aiming for.

She's not sure what she thinks about that yet.

Not exactly her intent, in any case.

She's supposed to be fixing the goddamn thing, not engineering a weapon or inadvertently killing the lanky geneticist that she's seeing less of than she'd like already.

Engrossed as heavily as she is in the calculations on the screen, burrowed warmly in a bed that smells of citrus and clove, Jack doesn't hear the comm when it chimes the first time. Nor the second. Until it chimes again and a-fucking-gain, and the eighth or so time, she reaches over to review the incoming messages and not expecting much. It could be Gal telling her that rent is due. It could be Bix, asking his three hundred and fourth question about where she's been for the past two months, where she went last week, why she's been transferred to _Genetics_ of all things. He's too fucking nosy lately for his own good, and dodging his questions is exhausting.

It could be the devil herself.

It is, in fact, a combination of the two. Namely Bix asking where she was the other evening and Moira O'Deorain saying simply - _Call?_. 

Jack does, slipping the comm into her ear as she opens the line, albeit with admitted distraction as she flips the schematic around to inspect it from a wholly different angle, reviews the calculations for what seems the six thousandth time. 

Almost wholly forgetting that the comm has patched through when she sees part of the problem, Jack highlights the equation, dark eyes roving over the dimly-lit screen when a low, lilting voice sounds over the comm in her ear, "Jacqueline?"

She jumps visibly, adrenaline kicking in a bit. With the comm in her ear, for a moment, it almost sounds like that lanky thing is in her bed, curled behind her, could have spoken those words just as low and lilting into her ear from right there. She wishes.

" _Jesus_ ," is what Jack breathes out intead. Dark eyes blinking once, she redirects her attention to the woman on the other end of the line with a smooth, "Hey, babe."

Tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear, Jack shifts a little further to get comfortable, annoyed once more at the stiffness in her arm as she turns the schematic in both hands as if it were a Rubik's cube with only one solved line. Her gaze narrows faintly in thought, and after a moment she observes smoothly, "Got distracted. This schematic is going to drive me to drink."

With some thought, her head atilt as she scrutinizes the screen before her, Jack asks with a subtle note of hesitation in her voice, "Is this social or professional, babe?"

"Mm," the noncommittal sound at the other end of the line isn't promising.

Not the answer she was hoping for. With the current epic level shitshow that is their schedules, there hasn't been much time for social or professional, if noticeably less of the first. So much less, in fact, that she'd sell a kidney for an uninterrupted night out. And that's notwithstanding the fact that _Akande_ has an incredible knack for ruining her plans at the last goddamn minute _with frequency_.

There's almost no chance it doesn't happen again in the future, Jack muses as she listens to the silence on the other end of the line. Not as soon as it might have, perhaps, if she and Moira hadn't both given him an earful after last week. Mostly Moira, now that she thinks about it. But that had more to do with how she returned from Junkertown than anything. It hadn't been a stellar trip, and she can still hear the sound of munitions dimly in the distance, taste a hint of blackpowder and red earth on the back of her teeth. 

Her complaints had primarily focused on how she'd been sent out to deal with Jaeden for _five days_ , even if it was billed as assistance with the relief effort and rebuilding. Her tolerance for that wolfish smile diminishes every time she sees it.

Another omnic hit. Smaller. One that was easily turned by the combination of Junkers and what members of Talon had remained behind to assist. A few Irukan over the walls. Nothing more. Not a Bullshark. Certainly not a fucking Stonefish this time, and Jaeden? Well. She was less than pleased by the omnic incursion even as small as it was, and took it out by being a right fucking shit about Jack being sent out to assit, all smugness and swagger.

All smugness and swagger. Up until the point that they hopped down on the flatlands to scrap it out with Devil's Gulch near a solar farm.

Her shoulder still aches dully where the bullet went through. Oldworld, not even a pulse munition round. It hadn't left the cleanest exit out the back on its way, and Wolf wasn't exactly the world's greatest surgeon. Suffice to say that when you return to Oasis, shitfaced on moonshine because he's out of painkillers and with a semi-patched hole in your shoulder, you not only end up with a killer hangover, but an absolutely fucking _livid_ girlfriend. 

_Especially_ if she's the one picking you up from the transport into Oasis. 

_Especially_ , if she's a doctor.

Jack still isn't one hundred percent sure which was worse, in all honesty. The bit where she was sitting on the end of an exam table with a roaring headache, grey around the edges of her vision, and cool, marble-firm fingers picking out the crudely done stitches while Moira fumed in absolute, livid silence. Or maybe when Moira started to find the remaining lead that Wolf had missed. There had been a lot more talking then. More like yelling. In loud, irate Gaeilge. Whether into the comm at Akande or at her, she's still not sure. She can't remember much of it after that.

Turns out, after a rather terse conversation on her awakening, that alcohol isn't great for you when you're already bleeding. Which to be fair, Jack hadn't been. Externally. It's a small miracle that Moira didn't kill her when she pointed that out. She's still blaming it on the blood loss.

And even that hadn't gotten her out of heading back to Rialto a few days later. For all his compassion, Reyes just put her to work cleaning weapons and drawing up schematics for body armor after he'd been expressly forbidden to pile-drive her into a training mat for three weeks. Then, presumably as punishment for getting shot in the first place, he sent her on a team-building exercise. Turns out that just meant he was sending her shopping with Liv so he wouldn't have to go himself.

"Babe?" her voice is smooth and pleasant when it breaks the silence, the corner of her lips twitching up as she realizes that she isn't the only one who was in the middle of something. Cadence lilting a touch, Jack drawls out slowly, "I'm naked."

There's a pause of almost a full minute before she hears a slow, surprised, "What?" in response.

"Got your attention, didn't it?" she teases, feeling a bit cheeky for it. "You going to answer me, or should I send pictures until you catch on?"

That elicits a low, pleasantly husky chuckle. The sound of it is familiar, but it's been distant enough that she misses it all the same. Wants to hear it again, closer. Against her skin.

"I had hoped, Jacqueline," comes a clarification from Moira after a long moment, the droning of laboratory tech humming in the background. Footsteps undercutting it as there's a slow walk back toward the office, the soft 'click' of the door shutting and then the subtle creaking of leather as that tall frame sinks down into the leather chair behind a desk of glass and gleaming metal. "That you may come down to the lab this evening."

"Your date pitch needs work," Jack counters amusedly, and when it becomes clear that she's not going to be able to focus on her schematics for the time being, she simply shuts off the screen and gives in to Moira's voice on the other end of the line. It's an altogether pleasant distraction. "What's in it for me, gorgeous?"

"Besides my illustrious presence?" an inquiry follows, a note of smugness to that voice as it drawls in her ear, "One would think that should suffice."

"Mm. You are pretty brilliant, Doctor O'Deorain," Jack replies, dark eyes half-lid as she watches nothing in particular. "But it's also very cold outside."

A knock sounds at a door. Not hers, given the slow inhalation and equally slow exhalation she hears on the other end of the line.

"A moment," comes Moira's voice, low lilt cast with an uncustomary displeasure. "Come in."

Low and hushed, the stilted conversation that ensues consists largely of abrupt directives, if not wholly brusque confirmations of what someone should or should not be doing inside the laboratory, as well as a rather pointed commentary on safety procedures. One that must not be excessively important, given that Moira leaves her on the line for it.

When the door shuts a second time, Moira muses idly, "There are samples to run and a new _intern_ to direct at the moment. Though, I thought you may come down to converse in person while I wait for sets of solution to synthesize. Perhaps discuss your project over takeaway, if you would like."

"Takeaway is tempting," Jack counters, pondering the existence of a cobweb in the corner and realizing that she desperately needs to dust. "But it's still real fucking cold out."

"Then bundle up," comes a low directive, the hint of a scoff chasing after it. It's not without a hint of mirth, but pointed all the same when the other woman asserts, "Haven't you enough of my belongings at current to accomplish such?"

She absolutely does. Four sweaters, a labcoat, and at least one soft black t-shirt that are all tucked away in the closet.

"Wouldn't that be telling?" Jack asks in return, debating whether or not to start getting dressed now or wait until they've finished their conversation. "Because, if I had any of your sweaters, this'd sound an awful lot like a ploy to get them back." 

"They are mine, you realize, Jacqueline?" there's another chuckle at that. She could hear that every day and not tire of it.

"I'll make you a deal," she points out with a soft undercurrent of mischief to her cadence. "I'll transfer you a thousand credits if I bring you back a sweater and you actually wear it. In public. Since you like them so much."

Moira won't do it. One of them is an orange _Naruto_ hoodie.

Blithely ignoring her statement, the other woman opts instead to confirm - as if it were already set in stone, "I will expect you at five. My intern should not be about much longer than that."

"I like how you say that like I'm coming down there," Jack answers back, ignoring the fact that she's already started to move.

She is. Moira already knows she is. She already knows she is, even before she turns the blankets back and settles her feet on the cold floor. The comm still in her ear, her slim frame stretches slowly before she pads her way over toward the closet to find better options for the current weather amongst her pilfered stash of clothing, and continues with a pointed, "To hang out with you and your shitty intern."

"On my day off," Jack intones on, starting to toss clothing at the bed. Layers. It's going to require layers if she's heading outside. "When it's colder than a witch's tit outside."

"Colourful," comes the slowly drawled response. Another pause, before that voice observes drily, "Don't forget your jacket."

"I'm in bed," she lies smoothly by way of response, already pulling on a set of leggings, a pair of joggers drawn on over them soon after. The corner of her lips curling up, Jack blows a strand of hair out of her eyes and points out, "You're cute, O'Deorain. But you aren't _that_ cute."

"Is that so?" that lilting voice drawls out on the other end of the line. It takes on a wholly suggestive timbre then, one that she's heard murmur into her ear under _vastly_ different and more favorable circumstances. One that leaves her fingertips feeling a little warm as the words fall," _Faigh caife dubh dom ar do bhealach,_ Jacqueline. I would be grateful."

Yeah. If she wasn't going down there already, she would be now. Fuck.

Shrugging on the first shirt she can find with long sleeves, Jack roots around in her closet for a moment to find one of the brightly-coloured hoodies that Moira _never wears_ but always ribs on her for taking. With sincerity, she asks in turn, "What does that mean?"

A coy smile that the other can't see crosses her features, carries through to her voice, "I liked the sound of it."

You wouldn't think that a brief silence could sound smug, but the one on the other end of the line is certainly managing.

"I thought you might." 

God, Moira's cocky. Self-assured, the drawl on the other end of the line so certain. Not that Moira's wrong. She likes it, and Moira knows that she likes it, which is a dangerous combination. 

In the midst of rolling up the sleeves of her sweater, entirely too long for her slim frame, Jack hears the other intone in a low timbre, "It means fetch me a coffee on your way. Black. Two, if you are feeling especially magnanimous."

"Brat," is all she can manage in turn, unable to contain a soft sound of amusement. "You want anything else if I'm stopping?"

The comm is already silent, the call ended now that the other is certain she's coming.

Smug little shit.

\--- 

She's waiting in line for her coffee order when someone catches her lightly by the elbow. Not the brightest move one could make, to be certain, but she's far less likely to hit someone for it in Oasis. At least less so than she would be in Junkertown.

It's a compulsion she swiftly reconsiders on a sidelong glance, at seeing a familiar woman with honeyed hair and arguably the bluest eyes that she's ever seen. A woman that she last saw in her apartment, wearing a modified Valkyrie suit complete with _angelic wings_ , right before Mercy pulled the trigger and put a suppressed pulse round directly into her shoulder.

She really needs to stop getting shot.

Her dark eyes, almost black in the low light of the coffee shop, narrow almost immediately, the dangerous glitter to them not missed in the slightest if the slow sigh that escapes _Mercy_ is any indication. There's a reason Jack was approached in a crowd, she realizes, as her knuckles pale from the clenching of a fist at her side and her lip curls back slightly to reveal a slip of teeth.

The question is abrupt, almost a growl when it cuts itself on the edge of them, "Really? The _fuck_ you want, mate?"

Immediately on the defensive is the safest bet, the smartest, and she flicks a look around the shop for any of the rest of them. It doesn't relax her all that much when she doesn't see them.

But there's a long, somewhat slow exhalation from the blonde woman beside her, before Mercy asserts in a voice that's subtly accented, sounds more patient than she suspects it is, "Just to talk, Miss Vargas. You have my word."

If they weren't in a coffee shop, she already would have clocked her. Feels the tension wire-tight in her shoulder, pulling at it in a way that exacerbates the ache there. Can't stop.

"Yeah?" Jack all but bites out the words, each of them punctuated hard before she realizes that some of their fellow shop-goers are starting to give them an odd lock. "You want to know how the fuck that worked out for me last time, princess?"

She does not have time for this shit. Should walk out. Should walk the fuck right out of here and fuck right off to the Genetics building, where she's headed anyways, before this goes straight to hell for the second time. The stubborn part of her, the one that's a Junker, all metal and red earth through and through, says otherwise. None of the tension in her slim frame departing it, Jack turns back toward the counter, her jaw setting noticeably as she waits for her order to be called. 

If she has to head down to Genetics anyways, there's no reason not to take the coffee and freshly-baked croissants that she's waiting on. The chances that Moira has actually eaten anything today are almost zero, if she knows her as well as she thinks she does. 

Mercy doesn't let up easy, starts to speak further from near her shoulder, that honeyed voice lowered a touch to avoid further scrutiny from their fellow customers, "We heard about the warehouse. And Junkertown. You have my condol-"

" _Fuck your condolences_ ," Jack hisses out, far quieter than the first time, but still forcing an all-too-polite smile when an older woman nearby looks up at her. Uncomfortable in this situation is probably the understatement of the year. This is more uncomfortable than the artificial winter they've induced in Oasis for the holidays. It's pulling her in directions that she doesn't want to remember. 

A barista is chopping fresh fruit on the counter, and the sound of the knife on the board reminds her of the sharp, staccato snap of her fingers, broken in the warehouse in the desert. She can feel the ache in the knuckles still, knows it will fade with the ghost of the memory. 

Jack taps her fingertips to the side of her leg once. Twice. Counts to ten, slowly in her mind, until her focus slowly starts to return. Until the ache in the knuckles dims. She wants to slam them into that perfect face until it leaves her alone, but doesn't.

"You have as long as it takes to walk to the university," is what the Junker ventures instead. 

For an instant, as those blue eyes blink with excruciating slowness behind honeyed lashes, Jack can see the hint of steel behind them, the way that the corners tense faintly at her given destination. It's telling. There's a moment in which they shift over her as if to intuit what common ground may rest between them, if any.

Not much. Not any that Jack can see, to be certain. But she's not sure what _that look_ means.

_Mercy_ is prim and proper, looks right posh for a trip to an Oasis coffee shop. A sharp, cream-coloured dress with understated jewelry in gold. The sort that you wear to look understated, but actually makes you look classy as fuck. A simple, similarly cream-coloured jacket with polished white buttons. Not a strand of that golden hair is out of place, upswept to reveal the long, elegant column of the neck. It look effortless, which means it wasn't, from the carefully applied makeup in blue and gold, to the manicured nails with a french tip.

This close to her, the other woman carries the scent of a soft, floral perfume. 

Definitely not casual.

Jack is smoky eyeliner. She's chipped black nail polish that she should have removed four days ago, but hasn't bothered because there's no time to reapply it. She's a leather jacket that reads _Junkertown Jackrabbit_ after her destroyed mecha, thrown on over a hoodie, black joggers, unlaced combat boots. She's a fresh tattoo on one knuckle, and what little jewelry she's wearing is made out of metal wire and stone beads. Some holistic shit that Kamaka sent her in the post.

The sweater is her favorite. Mostly because she stole it from her favorite geneticist's closet when she came back from Junkertown, and it hasn't been absent the other woman too long. Still carries the faint fragrance of burnt amber and bergamot that is so distinctly Moira, tells her that despite swearing that she doesn't wear them, Moira does. Maybe just for her. It's a nice thought.

That the fucking thing is red heather with an image of festive sugar cookies on the front, and reads _Looking like a snack_? That's just icing on the proverbial cake. She'd pay good money to see O'Deorian wear it in public. And while it's far too long, the hem reaching mid-thigh and the cuffs pushed up to her wrists, it's warmer by far than anything that she owns, and is by far one of her favorite things to have found in the other's closet. Maybe next to the _Naruto hoodie_.

Jack arches a brow right back at the other woman when that blue stare lingers, thinking they must look like stray dogs spotting each other on the street. Starting to say something, her attention is swiftly drawn to the barista that calls out, "Vargas?" instead.

With a cursory check to make sure that the carrier houses not only the prerequisite black coffees, but her beverage of choice, and that all the pastries are secure in the bag, Jack tips generously before heading toward the door. She doesn't bother to look and see if Mercy is following. It's not hard to tell, with the soft click of heels behind her as she steps out onto the street, and warily checks once more for unexpected company. 

Taking a moment to pull up the hood for warmth, Jack makes her way down the street in relative silence, her breath coiling in silver-white mist on every exhalation from the chill. When it seems evident that the other woman will be accompanying her the entirety of the way, she inquires, "So what do you want, Mercy?"

"Please," the blonde woman keeps pace easily, doesn't look half as uncomfortable in the cold as she is at the moment. Not by far. She can hear her own teeth chattering softly as they make their way down the sidewalk, and wonders if it will snow. "Call me Angela. I understand that we got off on the wrong foot and I-"

"You _fucking shot me_ ," Jack bites out with vehemence, an incredulous look for the woman beside her as she skirts around a few other pedestrians. That's when it hits her, and she stops dead on the sidewalk so suddenly that Mercy almost walks into her. Dark eyes scrutinize the other's features, and it all starts to click, "Wait. Angela. Ziegler is it? Swiss doctor?"

"Mhm. Are you familiar with my work?" Angela asks of her, conversationally enough. If you didn't know how much steel lived behind those blue eyes, hadn't seen it for yourself, Jack imagines how easy it would be to let your guard down under their gaze. Let yourself believe the lie. She tells herself that's what's getting under her skin.

It's not.

There's so much tension in her jaw that it's starting to ache, and her dark eyes don't leave the other entirely, watching from the periphery as she starts to walk once more. 

"No," is what Jack opts for then, "But I'm pretty familiar with being under your ex at this point. That what all this is about?"

The shift in the other woman's demeanor at that is sudden, nearly instant. It catches Angela off guard, and she watches several emotions that she can't quite place flicker over those comely features before the blonde tucks hands into the pockets of that cream-coloured coat and intones patiently, almost soothingly, "I'm worried that you are too close to the situation to see it clearly. I didn't once. Moira is charming, and she knows it. She'll use it to keep you in the dark, use you to her own ends."

Night-dark eyes narrow faintly in contemplation of that as they cut down a sidestreet toward the university, and Jack slips a hand from her pocket, curling it around the drink carrier instead so that she can warm the other one. She needs to invest in mittens. 

"That isn't a no," she observes blithely. "It isn't really any of your business."

"It was - once," comes that patient voice, soft in its own way.

Something about how it's set makes her bristle, dark eyes set on the other woman as they continue to walk. A hint of a challenge beneath it's feather softness, one that makes her shoulders set and her chin lift slightly.

"There is nothing she will not sacrifice in the pursuit of her research. It is something she values more than your life, or even her own," Angela's voice softens further at her expression, though only just so. It doesn't evade her that the eyes don't, stay just as cool as ever. Overwatch's angel is too good at this. "You've seen what she's done to her arm, Jack. What do you think she would do to you?"

"If I know her, and I _do_ ," the blonde intones as they pass beneath an arch limned with frost-kissed ivy. "It's merely a matter of time before she ruins your work, or ruins you. Don't become another casualty of Moira O'Deorain. I can attest that it isn't worth it."

Jack clicks her tongue to the roof of her mouth, asserts drily as they draw through another sidestreet toward the centre of the university, "Funny. Never figured you could read minds in addition to flying around with a _massive god complex_. You need to get special clearance for that?"

That elicits a modicum of steel in that voice, the veneer starting to strip away as Angela answers , "You're being a child."

"And you're pretending that you're not in Oasis because a Junker is touching your old toys," Jack counters smoothly, another shiver running own her spine as the wind picks up.

A hand catches her by the elbow and she only just stops herself from doing something stupid about it. What she does do, however, is take a half-step forward on the turn to bring them uncomfortably close in the relative silence of the sidestreet and draw them to a dead halt. She isn't as tall as Angela, but that's never stopped her. Jack is nothing if it's not swinging above her weight class. 

When night-black eyes lock with sapphire-blue, neither of them are giving an inch, and she can see the tension in the other's jaw now. It's not going as anticipated, on either front.

"Could you stop being _ein kind_ for two minutes and _listen_ ," Angela all but hisses between her teeth, evidently tired of her shit already. "You do not know Moira O'Deorain better in half a year than I did in _eight_. You have a project together, yes? That's how it _starts_. But the things that she's willing to do for the sake of scientific advancement aren't safe. They aren't _ethical_."

"Human trials without consent," the blonde woman presses on, an earnest look on those features that she doesn't _see_ in the eyes, as much weight as their seems to be in it. The hand on her arm hasn't moved either, which - to be frank - is starting to piss her right the fuck off. "Unforseen mutations. Casualties swept under the rug. She will take your life's work and twist it to her own ends, until you don't even recognize what she has done with it."

"I'm a _mechanic_. What _exactly_ do you think she's going to do that I wouldn't notice?" Jack pushes back, shoulders squaring up a little further and stiff from the tension in them as she cocks her head to the side. "She going to splice some genes into my mecha while I'm not looking?"

Those blue eyes narrow dangerously, and Jack knows then that Angela _knows_ , lifts her chin as if it would somehow mitigate their height difference.

"Medtech utilizing unstable materials," comes an altogether too certain response, iron beneath the blue ribbon of Angela's voice. "You could easily make what she's done to herself worse. You could enable her to hurt _more people_ with it."

"Good," Jack replies in a smooth drawl, feeling her upper lip pull slightly to reveal a slip of teeth in an expression that is in no way a smile. No. "She'll stay alive longer if your merry band of dipshits shows up in her living room. Right, mate?"

"Weaponizing medical tech isn't-" the protest is louder this time, full of conviction. Someone has stopped at the end of the street. She doesn't look to see who it is.

"Isn't what?" she feels every inch a Junker as she searches those perfect blue eyes, feels the red earth and spilled blood, the machine oil and toil that brought her up in the scrubland. The challenge carries through to her voice, soft as it goes as she asks, "Isn't right? Isn't _fair_? Life isn't fair, precious. You fucks are all the same. World peace, all that shit."

"You even know what peace looks like?" Jack cocks her head to the side a bit, quelling a little chatter to her teeth as she leans minutely closer. Gets in the other woman's space, the way that Angela has been getting in hers. "It looks like your home sold out from under you while the omnics they gave it to are still _hunting your people for sport_. Peace is a lie."

A snort escapes her at that, and she drawls out more slowly, the words turning to a coil of mist in the chilly air between them, "You have to fight for what you want." Dark eyes search blue pointedly at that, "And I think we both know that's what you're really out here doing today. Isn't it?"

"Jack," there's audible frustration in that honeyed voice now, a hint of a colour risen to a cream complexion that she suspects has little enough to do with the cold.

She leans forward until they're nearly touching. Close enough that she can smell the softly floral fragrance of the other woman's perfume above the cold, crisp air, and the scent of coffee from down the street. And then she confides in a low whisper near Angela's ear, "She's not your baby. Now move, angel, or _get run over_."

The hand slips from her arm at that, and Jack draws back, one step, then two, before lifting her chin in a nod toward the other woman. She shoulders past Tracer at the end of the alley brusquely, not halted in her path toward the heart of the university this time.

As she stalks toward the Genetics building, Jack activates the comm. When her call to the lab picks up, the voice on the other end is low and lilting, sounds surprised as it asks, "Jacqueline?"

"Send your intern _home_ ," is all she replies, firmly.

She fucking means it.

\---

Interesting thing about Jack's transfer to another department, temporary as it may be. The geneticist doesn't have to let her into the laboratory anymore.

She has tattooed hands up the front of a black button-down shirt within less than a minute of arriving in the office proper. Well. Hand, really. The colder of the two. It's sufficient to cause the taller woman to suck in a quick breath and jerk back out of a kiss that _definitely_ isn't an appropriate hello, that has her a little breathless already and the rim of colour around Moira's dark pupils receding. 

The other hand, to be fair, is tangled hopelessly in a half-undone Windsor knot, which she uses to pull the other back forward abruptly. 

There's a small part of Jack that tries to tell herself that she had much purer intentions prior to running into Angela _fucking_ Ziegler in downtown Oasis. Intentions that had not included setting a drink carrier on the corner of Moira's desk and then circling around it to straddle the other in an office chair. One that certainly included them being fully clothed, but definitely excluded the slow grinding of her hips against the other woman's and the way a husky chuckle sounds when it's made into her mouth. 

A much larger part of her is wondering why this wasn't her original plan all along, as she _finally_ manages to pull that tie free and unceremoniously flings it aside, the top few buttons of the taller woman's shirt flicked open in rapid succession. Which is good, because it means that she can find something else to do with her hand, namely twining her fingers into that perfect, coppery hair and pulling Moira's head back for better access to the taller woman's neck.

Her lipstick leaves behind smudges of cherry red where she's been. Along the elegant column of that marble-white throat, at the corner of the other's lips, brushed at the collar of a discarded labcoat. She likes it in all of those places. A reminder that she's been there, that she's here, that this is _hers_. She likes the low groan that emanates from Moira's chest when she finds just the right spot and bites down even _better_.

The impossibly husky, breathy intonation of her name follows after, "Jacqueline," all velvet and smoke in a Dubliner accent. Well. If she hadn't been sure where this was headed before, she's for damn sure now. "If you keep this up I-"

"So fucking do it," is all Jack murmurs, her smooth voice fraying around the edges as it's breathed out against the curve of the other's ear. She nips there afterwards, draws the blunt edge of her nails slowly down the other's sternum. 

It's not a sentiment that finds words. Instead, it responds with a low sound near hear ear, one that borders on a growl. When she's lifted up, Moira standing with the action, it's only to set her on the edge of the desk and then push her down onto it, a hand at the centre of her chest to keep her there. 

There's a moment in which Moira stands still, coppery hair in disarray and countenance wholly intense in a way that it rarely is outside research. The taller woman licks her lips slowly as if in though, and scarlet and blue eyes flick over her before that whiskey and smoke timbre announces, "Aro, protocol seven."

Several things happen at once. There's a magnetic 'click' as the door locks abruptly. The incandescence of the harsh overhead lights dims, taking on a hue closer to soft amber. One that draws out every last cinnamon-tinted freckle on that hard-angled countenance. The music turns on, softer and more soothing than she's used to. Protocol seven. For when Moira sleeps in the lab instead of returning home, a more frequent occurrence than not.

"What's gotten into you?" is the question that falls from Moira's lips, even as the taller woman leans over her, one hand coming to rest at the curve of her hip. The other comes to rest flat on the desk, beside her head as those angular features draw nearer hers. 

Jack catches a handful of that partially unbuttoned shirt, uses it to pull herself up a scarce measure, shoulders lifting from the desk. A knee is already hooked over the other woman's hip. She angles to kick off her boots, then draws much nearer, so close their noses brush lightly and she can see the vivid gleam of scarlet and blue behind coppery lashes that nearly touch her now. 

"Nothing," is what she whispers back, so close that their lips brush with the word. Dark eyes flick down between them and then back up, locking with mismatched as the Junker prompts lowly, " _Yet_."

Cool, soft lips meet hers then, in a way that carries all the intensity of the woman they belong to. Jack feels teeth graze her lower lip, sink in slightly, and her breath catches. And then those long, slender hands are shoving up her shirt, sweater and all, not bothering in the slightest to remove it, only push it up as far as the other can - to the shoulders. Far less ceremony goes into the removal of joggers, leggings, and everything beneath, scattered on the office floor along with Moira's tie.

Hot, rough kisses find their way onto bare skin, and she sucks a shuddering breath in at that. When her back arches, the hand near her head drifts down, holding her down at the hip. And that's somehow worse, because the lower that fucking mouth goes on her coppery skin, the more the taller woman is drawing things out. Biting in some places. Hot, open-mouthed kisses others. Sucking gently where she's just been bitten. 

The longer it goes on and the harder those hands hold her in place, the more she feels like she's going to implode on Moira's desk. Spontaneous combustion, fire and black powder, a scorched outline left on cold metal and glass for the other to remember her by. 

When the teasing stops and that mouth finds its way home, her head falls back, a sharp sound emanating from somewhere in her chest as warmth and heat coil through her. She fights the urge to move her hands, to wind them into that coppery hair and grasp tight, but instead keeps them where they are. Above her head, curled so firmly around the edge of the desk that they might go numb, as if it were the only solid ground in the room.

She doesn't beg this time. She's tempted. Would, if she needed to. But there's no breath for a soft _please_ to get Moira's attention, not in the way the taller woman likes, because she already has it in the slow strokes of a skillful tongue and the crooking of long, slender fingers. It's warmth and heat, building on itself until it threatens to take her with it. Then it does.

Spontaneous combustion.

It sounds like her voice, smooth cadence unravelling around the edges as she breathes out the other's name in the dim light, the way it shivers above the music. It feels like the wind gone out of her, a shot of whiskey downed, amber like the sun as it spreads warmth through the centre of her to reach trembling fingertips. It tastes like the not so distant memory of salt and lipstick, of how her lips brushed the pale column of the other's throat.

A warm kiss finds the plane of her hip afterwards, coaxing her down. A gentler touch from the hands that rest there, the light stroking of thumbs in a half-circle over coppery skin as the taller woman leans up, over her. The brush of a kiss to her cheek is much softer, a tender thing that lingers there, warm like the soft exhalation of a breath against her skin. Dark lashes flutter at the gesture, and she grasps the other's chin lightly in trembling fingers, turning her head to catch Moira's lips with her own.

Scarlet and blue eyes meet her dark when she threads her fingers up into the taller woman's coppery hair, not quite smoothing it. It's how they remain for a time, all quiet words and gentle touches, until Moira starts to draw back and Jack's hold in the other's hair is not relinquished. A flicker of amusement dances behind those mismatched eyes at that, a perfect brow arched as if in question. 

"You really think you're getting off that easy?" is the answer back, murmured with a laugh into the taller woman's ear. 

\---

They order Thai.

It's a standard affair. She runs up to the entrance of the building to collect it when it arrives, tipping generously, while her counterpart busies with checking on labwork that should have been tended to _much sooner_ than when the geneticist gets to it. That in and of itself is an uncommon occurrence. It brings them to white cartons set out on the coffee table near the sofa, Jack breaking apart the chopsticks for them to use as the taller woman drifts back in, a sharp juxtaposition of pale, freckled skin and a black shirt only haphazardly and half-buttoned.

It doesn't matter. Everyone else will be home now anyways.

And it's a good look on Moira.

To be fair, Jack is equally certain that everything and nothing at all are just as good a look on that tall, lanky woman at this point. Although, to her dismay, no amount of hunting has turned up the other's tie at this point, and she's had to chalk it up as a casualty. Lord knows where Moira will find it eventually.

When scarlet and blue eyes meet hers, Jack winks a dark eye, the corner of her lips curling mischievously at the subtle dusting of colour along the other's sculpted cheekbones. It isn't often that she can get one over on Moira. Having returned the sentiment earlier, the tension of a lanky frame beneath her in the office chair, had damn well counted. 

Technically, Jack muses, it had counted twice over. When she leaned in, murmured utter filth in broken Gaeilge into the shell of the other's ear and all the tension in that lanky frame went undone at once, left the geneticist warm and languid in its wake, more than a little colour to freckle-dusted cheekbones and at the tips of the ears. 

Thus far, she's determined that she _definitely_ needs to expand on what she knows of that particular dialect at this point. Another independent study that she definitely liked the result of, especially given the pink tinge still at the shell of Moira's ears and the way those vividly mismatched eyes drift back toward her every so often. The little curl to the corner of the taller woman's lips? That's just a bonus.

This is definitely on her top five visits to the Genetics lab at this rate.

With a carton of peanut chicken in one hand and a set of slightly rough chopsticks in the other, Jack kicks back in her seat, shifting her shoulders slightly to get comfortable before angling for a piece of chicken. It's hot. It's real fucking hot. By the time she's reached the third bite, there's a distinct needling sensation to the inside of her mouth, and her eyes are watering a little bit. In a good way. It's the only way to eat Thai food, in her opinion.

Crossing over to sit beside her, the taller woman comes to rest with their shoulders touching, a comfortable warmth present from the contact. Jack nestles into it a bit as she picks through her meal, though warns at the outstretch of chopsticks toward the carton, "It's hot, babe."

What that earns her is little more than the arching of a perfect brow and a subtle look of what she perceives to be challenge, which would be entertaining, if she didn't already know that the taller woman has no conceivable spice tolerance at all. Shrugging anyways, she opts to lean forward and only just brush her lips against the cool, soft curve of the other's.

It goes about as she expected, her jaw grasped gently in long fingertips, enough to stop her from doing it again as the other hand lifts to where her lips brushed as if the spot stung slightly. It probably does. Applying faintly more pressure, yet hardly enough to matter, Moira directs in a low lilt before releasing her, "None of that."

With a look that clearly says _I told you so_ , Jack quirks a mischievous little smile, then adds as if it were vastly more interesting, "Your ears are still pink."

"Yes. Well," there's a pause, the soft clearing of a throat as Moira fishes through a different carton for a more palatable entree. She could swear the tips of those ears get a little more red at that, even if the drawl is smooth and practiced as ever, "You have no comprehension of what you _actually said_ , Jacqueline. That is _abundantly_ clear."

Her mischievous smile turns to a fully realized grin at that, and she inquires in a voice that's altogether too smooth on its own, "You want me to say it again?" Jack teases further, a pointed look cast over the other woman, "I think you liked it."

Vividly dark still, scarlet and blue eyes settle on her in a way that tells her the answer is a definitive yes, despite the way the taller woman counters, "Not while you are consuming that, I do not. I suspect it would be hazardous."

"You never know until you try it," Jack counters with wink, wholly pleased with herself, though it doesn't stop her from picking through her chicken.

A low, sudden laugh sounds from the taller woman at that, and Moira selects a piece of shrimp with impeccable ease before stating matter-of-factly, "I am absolutely certain, Jacqueline, that I know what would occur and that it would be _unpleasant_. It's not merely opinion. It's medical science."

Clicking her tongue off the roof of her mouth, Jack intones impishly, "That's an awful lot of words for ' _I'm a quitter_ ', babe."

A shoulder bumps hers at that, and she earns a soft scoff, though it's accompanied by another sidelong glance at her and the curve of the other's ears are still more than a little pink. She doesn't hate that. Not a bit. 

The ensuing silence is comfortable as they make their way through the meal, and when Moira produces a datapad to check work, she opts to stay. It's some time later, sprawled out on the couch and half-across the taller woman's lap, her cheek nestled to the other's stomach, that she muses idly, "I ran into your ex today."

The fingertips in her hair still for a moment, then stroke back through it, tucking a dark tress behind her ear in a tender fashion as Moira asks calmly enough, "Did you now?"

"Mm," her response is noncommittal, a simple, "Caught up with me in the coffee shop to lecture me about your _wiles_. I already called the boss. He's having Liv check the employee reqs here. She knew a bit about our project."

A hint of a smirk touches those angular features then, and _that's interesting_ , her dark eyes following it from behind darker lashes as she confides, "Don't be smug."

She snorts softly afterwards when the devilish cast to those features doesn't seem to fade, scarlet and blue eyes harboring a glint of amusement even as they scan the datapad. 

"Might as well tell water not to be wet," Jack observes, more to herself than anything. Allowing her eyes to slip closed and feeling comfortably warm in her borrowed hoodie, she confides conversationally, "She's still into you, you know."

"Water and perhaps a few other things, mm?" the way Moira drawls the words out has her dark eyes slip back open. As if proving a point, those cool, marble-firm fingers curl around her wrist, lifting her hand enough to pointedly draw attention the faint tremor there. The low, pleased sound made in Moira's chest is telling, and a smirk carries through to that lilting, whiskey-smooth voice as the other woman asserts, "I have that effect on women."

Night-dark eyes meet mismatched at that, hold the other's gaze to read the spark of mirth in them, before Jack murmurs back with a mirth of her own, "You're an insufferable brat, and I hope you never find your tie."

There's a husky laugh for her then, one that resonates warmly in her chest, past the bones. Another chuckle, lower than the first, sounds thereafter, and she burrows a bit closer when Moira draws the blanket down off the back of the couch to drape over her. 

"What was it about her?" it's not, perhaps, the question that she had intended to ask, but it's the one that falls from her lips all the same. It carries no judgment and little jealous, but more than a share of curiosity at the stark juxtaposition between the Swiss doctor and herself. 

There's a sharp look at that, one that's more inquisitive than it isn't. It doesn't cut deep, but feels as if it peels back a layer to study her motivations, before Moira asks, "An answer for an answer, rabbit. Why do you want to know?"

"I'm no angel," is what she answers, dark eyes lifting to mismatched with the words. As if that were answer enough. 

A slender hand cups her chin at that, the pad of a thumb stroking up along the jaw as that wine-dark, oceans-deep gaze holds hers from behind coppery lashes. A low lilt answers, patient and sincere, "I know."

There are many things that go unsaid between them, then. Words that perhaps don't need to be said and perhaps do, but are lost all the same between the dim and the dark. Between the soft incandescence of streetlights, white marble, the gold of Oasis and the dry, dusty red earth of Junkertown. 

Among them is the truth.

_I never asked you to be_.

\---- 

A week later, there are many things that Jacqueline Vargas isn't privy to. She is not aware, for instance, that there will be a Ministry visit on the day she's attempting to cast a trial set of implants from actual titanium, rather than the specialized alloy they secured in Junkertown. She is not aware that Moira's intern is currently running wild through the Genetics building, having mis-scheduled an appointment with Satya Vaswani for the same interval as the Ministry visit, and she is also not aware that in less than ten minutes time, the Vishkar representative will be arriving in the machine shop.

She is, however, _painfully aware_ when the door hisses open and she scrapes her fingers on a bit of scrap metal that she's shaved off the main components, that LaChance has found his way onto her private comm channel. 

Largely because his voice sounds out in her ear with seemingly unparalleled amusement, " _Dibs on the redhead_."

Clad in a dark tank top, with the arms of her machine shop uniform tied around her waist and more than a little metal clinging to the copper of her skin, Jack snaps her gaze up at that particular comment, scanning the room to see the conclave of Ministers that have entered the garage. The devil herself, predictably, among them.

It isn't even the tenth worst thing that could happen, to be honest. She needs to review a few figures with _Minister_ O'Deorain anyways, and it'll save her a trip to the laboratory later. 

"Shut the fuck up, Chance," is what she murmurs back into the commline, hearing him laugh from a few stations over. 

"You kiss O'Deorain with that mouth?" he shoots back over the line. 

"You want me to tell you about it?" Jack counters without so much as a pause, pulling her first set of components out of the makeshift machine forge. "Because I've done _a lot_ better than that."

"Hit me, darling," LaChance responds, not looking up from his workstation. 

The metal glowing an incandescent red-orange as she lifts it carefully with tongs, Jack carefully slips the delicate materials into a nearby tank of cryofluid to cool it quickly. There's a loud hiss, a kick of steam as the scaldingly hot metal hits superchilled liquid.

"Well, this one time..." Jack drawls out in a bored cadence.

"Oh my god," Galveston is on the line now as well, sounds exasperated with them already. "Stop."

She smirks, continues to work on the fine machine parts until the last of them have been tipped into a tank of cryofluid, then starts to clear her workstation of scrap. While Ministry visits are becoming more and more familiar as the weeks roll on, there's still an almost instant hush over the Junkers in the garage when the Oasis project leads start to make their rounds. 

It becomes all the more pronounced when the door hisses open again, and someone is ushered into the machine shop by a particularly flustered-looking intern. 

"Holy shit," LaChance's voice sounds on the comm once more. "It's Vishkar o'clock."

An apt statement, all things considered.

She doesn't pay much attention to the Vishkar who has joined the conclave of Ministers, not at first. If Jack did, she would see a woman a bit taller than her naturally, even more so in heels. One that doesn't appear well-suited for the clamor and disarray of a Junker machine shop in the slightest, that looks coolly unimpressed by the machine oil and grime, the rust and prevalent scent of superheated metal. 

Richly turquoise and vividly gold, the airy sari that Satya Vaswani wears accentuates a natural grace, a slender frame, and with dark hair spilling over one shoulder and strung with errant beads of gold, she strikes an impressive figure. Would, even were she not against a sea of machineshop jumpsuits. 

Those dark eyes search across the garage with the intent of finding someone, and it isn't overly long before the sound of heels clicking softly on metal precede the woman's arrival at Moira's side, the light touch of a slender, articulated hand of white-lacquered metal resting on the Minister's own. A striking counterpart, all turquoise and gold, to the impeccably dressed geneticist in a slate-grey suit and white shirt, polished leather shoes. 

She doesn't notice the sound of them approaching her, occupied as she is in drawing some of the finer components out of the fluid to dry on a nearby tray, but her head jerks up at the familiar sound of a soft, thoughtful hum behind her. The subtle fragrance of burnt amber and bergamot, as the taller woman looks over her shoulder.

"Hey b-" as Jack turns, the second word dies on the tip of her tongue, because Moira isn't the only one there, looming near her workstation with the curious nature of a bird of prey. The newcomer's hand is still on the taller woman's arm, as if she were royalty and the geneticist were escorting her to some manner of gala, and the innate poise to the Vishkar is effortless. 

Her dark eyes blink once, slowly, before she wipes a smudge of oil from her cheek and strips off her gloves to toss them on the workstation.

"Ha! You look like you swallowed a fucking cane toad," LaChance's voice makes her jump when it sounds on the comm.

Jack stands still as a stone, and everything goes directly to hell about thirty seconds later. Because somewhere between the sudden silence and anyone _actually saying anything_ , Moira's tongue swipes over the lower lip to moisten it in a slow, practiced fashion, and when the taller woman intones something in a low lilt, it goes directly into one ear and out the other.

Mostly because whoever the Vishkar is, their dark eyes have fixed pointedly on the action in the way that Jack's almost did. She knows that look. 

_She makes that look_.

From two workstations away, LaChance is delighted by the turn of events, and the first thing she can coherently make sense of is his voice murmuring into the comm, "Ooh, Vargas. She looks like she wants to call your girl _daddy_."

Jack emits a strangled little sound in the back of her throat at that, dark eyes incredulous, and doesn't move until a warm hand finds her elbow and that taller woman bends slightly to encourage in a low lilt, "Count to ten, Jacqueline."

She does, turns away from them to settle her hands atop the workstation and slowly tap out the numbers, her eyes closing as she performs the action once. Twice. A third time before she feels fully back within herself, and leans around the workstation to lift her middle finger at LaChance. His head tilts back on a full-on laugh at that, and she relinquishes the gesture to slip back behind the cover of her station, attention directed fully to the Minister and Vishkar now, if a bit wary at the latter. It's probably just the run-in with Mercy, she reasons. That's probably all it is.

"Jacqueline," that lilting voice pulls her attention back once more, Moira appearing faintly concerned, though it's clear her rude hand-gesture wasn't clocked. By the geneticist, at least. She's not certain if the Vishkar rep just looks unimpressed all the time, or actually noticed. "This is Satya Vaswani. She will be lending us her technical expertise on our medtech research moving forward."

"Satya, this is Jacqueline Vargas. She was responsible for the schematics I sent you," the taller woman finishes smoothly, mismatched eyes drifting between the two of them as if attempting to discern what exactly is happening and not quite being able to settle on any one idea.

Holding out a subtly calloused hand, Jack manages to find her words at long last, intoning smoothly, "Jack. It's nice to meet you."

"Jack," comes the repetition of her name, cool and smoothly accented as it falls from the Vishkar's lips. It's a precise manner of speaking, to be certain, but she still has no idea what to do when Satya looks first at her outstretched hand and then meets her gaze once more before stating in what she presumes is meant to be a polite fashion, "No, thank you."

"Right, mate," is all Jack answers, not breaking the other's gaze for a long moment. Her eyes narrow faintly, before her hand drops back to her side and she simply nods once. Beckoning to Moira instead, she draws back over to her workstation and remarks, "I just got done casting our trial run to make sure the specifications would be alright."

Hopping up onto the edge of her workstation, boots dangling a bit above the ground, Jack holds up a section of argent metal between her pointer finger and thumb to display the delicate construction, then remarks, "First cast turned out well, but I was hoping that I could get you to take a look at the last stress test. A little unsure about the dynamic generation in the third articulation. Sometimes it's fine, but sometimes it reads a little odd."

With a curt nod and the leaning of a slim hip to the workstation, Moira takes up the offered datapad and keys in a short code to access the information therein, reviewing the fundamentals of the design for several seconds before musing in a low lilt, "If it fluctuates too much, the result may be increased nerve damage rather than increased function."

When a precisely designed metal and lacquer hand extends for the datapad, it's presented to Satya without protest, and the Vishkar scans over the schematic for almost a full ten minutes in silence, reviews the equations once, twice, she's fairly certain three times before that cool voice announces slowly, "This...is chaos." There's a brief pause, "How did you resolve the issue in the second articulation?"

"Two hours of sleep and a caffeine bender," Jack answers honestly, lifting a coppery shoulder in a light shrug and wishing that she wasn't so sweaty from working the machine forge. "I doubled back the figures on the first and rerouted power through the fourth."

Those dark brows are swiftly climbing toward the Vishkar's hairline, and she tries not to take it as an insult when that precise cadence remarks, "What an... _interesting_ way your mind works."

Dark eyes blink once, then twice, and her face must say it all because when Jack opens her mouth to retort, a light touch to her arm distracts her. When she flicks a glance sidelong, there's the minute shake of a head from Moira, so she presses her lips together in a rare show of compliance and opts to say nothing instead.

Reaching out for the datapad pen without looking, Satya takes it up and starts to make adjustments, musing without any awareness of the interaction, "I should be able to revise this to a more linear process. It will take approximately ten minutes to know if the result will be more functional than the current design."

"I'll..." Jack navigates the statement carefully, finally settling on jerking her thumb toward the breakroom and asking Moira directly, "I'm going to take a ten then, I need to eat something quick. Bring you back a coffee?"

There's a nod at that, the faint flicker of a smile that touches a countenance that has otherwise remained carefully professional for the duration of their conversation. 

"Satya?" she asks to be polite, the response a noncommittal gesture of the other's metal hand. There's a faint set to her jaw at that, but she lifts her shoulders in a shrug and hops down, leaving them to it as she heads back toward the breakroom with a slow exhalation.

When LaChance starts to speak this time, she intones smoothly, "Not now. You me to bring you back some peanuts or some shit?"

As the break room door swings shut behind her, she muses that she isn't really sure how to interact with Satya already and that both that and the recent run-in with Mercy are a part of the problem. It's a problem that can't be fixed with the Vishkar in the Junkertown way, and one that perhaps she would do better to ignore. Maybe she'll ask Chance about it later. He's spent a fair amount of time working with Vishkar since they moved to Oasis. 

It would probably bother her less if it weren't for her work schedule. It's unorthodox of late, at best. Long nights in the lab or in the machine shop, occasional coffee at four in the morning. It's as exhausting at this point as it is becoming familiar.

Finding the cups, Jack fills to of them with black coffee and catches a third for water for herself, leaving the overheated coffee on the counter to cool for a minute while she drops into a seat at a nearby table. Akande's been on her shit about caffeine again, and while he certainly wouldn't know about her pounding coffee, Reyes will, and he'll make her run if he founds out about it. She's starting to hate running, despite the obvious stamina gains.

Fuck cardio.

Flicking open her comm to review a few messages from Liv, she shoots one back to confirm their plans in Rialto later in the week, and folds her arms onto the tabletop to rest her head upon them after, closing her eyes for a few minutes. Between her work in Oasis, training in Rialto, and the more than occasional jaunt to Junkertown to deal with this or that for Akande, she hasn't been this overworked in her life. The demands of her various obligations hasn't put her in the best of moods.

She needs to chill.

Still, she copes with Marks when he saunters in to run his mouth about the machine shop with Nguyen. She copes with, to be precise, his wild recounting of events in Junkertown that he wasn't even present for, as relayed by his cousin Saltwater Pete, and then his review of their current Oasis supervisors in the garage. And his fixing of the wires in their latest mecha trial, which isn't true, because she'd heard Galveston bitching about having to follow after him and fix them.

She copes with it up until the precise point that she opens the comm and starts to review the biometrics from the lab, her datapad tapping idly on the surface of the table. Up until his commentary expands to the topic of the Ministers that are currently moving from workstation to workstation out in the shop.

"Vargas knows all about O'Deorain, isn't that right?" is what he opens, a grin stretching over his sun-browned features, and more than a little cocky self-adulation on his features as he looks over at Nguyen, who is trying not to openly smirk. "Parks said he saw you all out downtown a few weeks back." 

Nodding his head toward the bay window that offers a view of the machine shop outside, he asks like the asshole he is, "Having fun catching up with your side-piece, eh?"

"Doing actual work," Jack answers back, leaning her chin in her hand and not bothering to look up from her datapad. "But how _is_ your mom, mate?"

Nguyen laughs aloud at that, makes her way over toward the vending machines to buy something.

Marks decidedly doesn't, something hard in his eyes as he shoots back with a snort, "Not half man enough for you if that ginger bitch from Genetics is the measure."

She should count to ten. She really should. But the thing about dealing with other Junkers is real simple. If she lets Marks step on her, he'll keep stepping on her, and word travels quick about that sort of shit in her circles. Also she doesn't have half the fucking patience for his horseshit that she would if she'd slept for more than eight hours and didn't have to be on a flight to Rialto in less than ten hours.

Her datapad hits the table with a clatter. Jack stands straight from the chair, not bothering to push it back, her head cocking to the side as she flicks a dark look from his boots to his shoes. Her chin lifts in a silent challenge, and she gives him one opportunity to eat his fucking words with the careful, smooth intonation of, "The fuck you say, mate?"

"Think you heard me fine the first time, Vargas," Marks lifts his chin back at that, the challenge in his eyes bright.

He reminds her in some ways of a dingo circling around a carcass on the shoreline, all white teeth and a harsh light in his amber-brown eyes. He knows well enough that she can't and won't walk away from it. Knows well enough that if you roll over in Junkertown, you keep getting fucking rolled.

"You know the Queen isn't _in Oasis_ to save your sorry ass, right?" he adds for good measure, and when he stands the exact same way that she did, if almost seven inches taller, leans forward, she knows how this is going to go already. 

Normally this is something that they'd tackle outside. Hop into the back alley on a break, scrap it out somewhere that their supervisors wouldn't see. As it is, when he reaches out to toy with her a little further, fingertips finding her sternum to shove her back with what amounts to a goading measure of force, she hopes that the rest of the Ministers have headed back to their offices.

Maybe if she was paying more attention to the shop, she'd see that most of them have. That LaChance is all but vaulting over his workstation to run toward the break room already. That Moira is following his gaze and in a few seconds will go deathly still. Maybe she'd see all of that, if she hadn't already shoved him back with enough force to almost knock him off his feet, his tall frame staggering back into the chairs.

Jack all but jumps after him, hears the sound of Nguyen backing up near the machines to stay out of the way as the other Junker catches up a chair and flings it in her direction. It hits. Hard. Almost knocks the wind out of her and almost certainly bruises the fuck out of her ribs, but she scrambles through the remaining chairs after him.

Upside of training with Reyes, Jack realizes as she ducks a punch and blocks a second one. He doesn't put up with bitching and he almost never gives her thirty seconds between slamming her face into the gymnasium floor and making her run laps to get her head on straight. Doesn't hurt that he's also about the same size as Abraham fucking Marks. 

Maybe it would have gone another way another day. As it is, several things happen in rapid succession. There's a quick, brutal exchange of knuckles that terminates in a bruised eye for Jack and cracked rib for the taller Junker. The break room door rattles, locked by Nguyen. Something in her _snaps_ at that.

Motherfuckers, the both of them.

If Jack gets her hands on him, she's going to hit him so hard his fucking family feels it in Junkertown. 

When he lunges forward this time, Jack pivots and puts him through the break room window, the shattering sound of glass turning swiftly into the crunching of it underneath her boots as she vaults over the sill after him, her legs kicked out from under her with a well-placed boot. And then they're scrapping in it, a tangle of elbows and bruised knuckles and bloodied teeth as the other Junkers start to whoop and circle around them.

The Vishkar rep looks _appalled_ and the newest of the Oasis supervisor starts to panic, reaches for a comm as if to call security. It's not the first time this has happened in the machine shop.

There's glass in her clothes. Glass in her hair. Glass in her coppery skin, which is abraded from their roll in the wreckage of the window, sticky with sweat and beading with blood where fragments of it have sunk in. 

When it ends, it ends concussively, the sharp _crack_ of her knuckles beneath his jaw followed by the sharper _click_ of his teeth together as a few of them break. Marks _taps_ in the broken glass, his hands held up placatingly as he spits blood and flecks of enamel onto the ground beside himself.

Jack wipes her own from a split lip with the back of her hand, reveals a slip of teeth in an expression that never borders on becoming a smile, her dark eyes furious as she looks down at him. She bites out, "Maybe you forgot I never needed anyone to fight my fucking scraps for me, you fucking piece of shit."

As the Oasis supervisors and a rather harried looking Galveston break through the outer ring of Junkers at the scene, Jack almost thinks about kicking him before he can get up. Would, if LaChance hadn't wound a hand in the back of her shirt. Her shoulders still squared up and a decided tension in her slim frame, she opts to snap lowly instead, "You keep her fucking name out of your mouth."

Dark eyes flicking from face to face at the ring of Junkers around them both, largely blocking them from view, Jack curls her lip back further and asks abruptly, "Anyone else got shit to say about it?"

Chance doesn't waste much time at that, simply yoking her up by the arms and all but forcibly dragging her out of the circle of Junkers. Past the break room, down the hall, into one of the supply closets they barely use before he lets her go and shuts the door behind them, leaning back against it before raking a hand through his hair and announcing, "What the _fuck_?"

Her hands are shaking.

A minute passes. Two. 

There's a knock at the door, and when Chance opens it, it seems entirely impossible that he could get any paler.

Moira O'Deorain looks fucking _livid_.


	33. your heart was like a renegade - hard to save

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ** all the drama  
> ** catch us next week for OPENING A CAN OF WORMS  
> ** Jack is a hot mess  
> ** Moira is a cold mess  
> ** Talonfam is a delight

The feeling is one of blood. Hot. Sticky. Beading along the curve of her shoulder and around the flecks of glass buried like so many miniscule needles in her skin. It coils around her knuckles, trickles down her chin to drip down, droplets that land on her shirt, that land on the metal floor like the soft pattering of rain on a Junkertown trailer. She can taste it, iron and copper, a hint of salt and grit on her teeth. Smell it, beneath the pervasive scent of hot metal and machine oil that permeates the entirety of the garage.

The adrenaline in her veins courses through, feels like it burns in the ends of her nerves, bitter and bright and leaving her with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach and the hollow of her chest, fuels the persistent tremor in her coppery, tattooed hands and the dull, throbbing ache everywhere that Marks' hits collided, landed at the line of a jaw or the curve of the ribs, or low near the hip when he went for the kidneys like a _motherfucker_.

Her lip aches. Her eye. Her scraped knuckles and bruised ribs. But she'd jump again if he opened his mouth. If he walked in behind Moira. Throw him through another window to the riotous sound of crackling, skittering glass, and throttle after him to make sure he felt the weight of every transgression. He doesn't get to talk shit about Moira, even if he only did it to get under her skin.

A persistent tremble has reached her, most prominent at the fingertips, and it doesn't diminish when that tall, lanky creature slips in behind them, all but towering with ginger hair and pale, freckled features behind a worried-looking LaChance.

Moira O'Deorain looms like a god who has found fault in their creations, countenance gone hard and _sharp_ in a way that would make stone or metal look soft, something brittle and bright in the vividly mismatched eyes that settle on her heavily, carrying the weight of worlds when they meet hers. 

She doesn't like what she sees in them, lifts a coppery hand to swipe a trickle of blood from her chin and feels tension settle into her frame, a wire-tight sensation across her shoulders as her breathing fails to even out. 

When that low lilt of a voice sounds at last, it carries the finality of a gavel. There's a distinct bite beneath it's chilly, professional veneer, like the stainless steel of a scalpel cold on the surgical table.

"Escort yourself _out_ , Mr. LaChance," is what the taller woman utters in that voice, one that she cannot help but hear a thousand criticisms and scathing indictments of her character in already. 

He pauses. Hesitates as his gaze flicks from the taller woman beside him over to her, his compatriot, his comrade in arms in more than just the battlefield the garage briefly turned into. As if he were asking permission, perhaps asking a question of her: 

_Do you want me to go?_

_Do you need me here._

Moira doesn't like that. It's in the way the line of that angular jaw draws a little tighter, lips press into a flatter line than they already were. But when Jack lifts her chin in a faint nod, she receives one back from LaChance, and he skirts around the other woman to exit the supply closet without a protest.

When the door shuts behind him with a soft _click_ , they're left alone, nothing but the way they watch one another in the dim light, and the scent of cleaning supplies mingling with machine oil, metal, a coppery tinge of blood. She braces herself for what's coming. There's almost no chance it ends favourably. Not for her. Not with that expression. 

There's a long moment in which she can only hear the hammering of her heart in her chest, only taste the blood and grit on her teeth. In which she can't look away from a vivid scarlet and blue gaze, but hates the way it looks back at her. As if they were never on even footing at all. As if the taller woman were a bird of prey and she was a particularly unsatisfactory fox in a field of wheat, something with perhaps too many claws and teeth to choke down. 

That voice is dangerous, still cold, as carefully controlled and sharp as a wire used for a garrote as Moira takes two steps forward, until they stand so close to each other it wouldn't take much to reach out, seize her in those talons, "What were you _thinking_?"

And isn't that a question?

Were she to answer it, the answer might be everything.

It might be _nothing_.

It might be that this was real, a chemical reaction the same as any other. Two parts blackpowder, and Marks's words the lit match that kicked it off. That it had to be done. Had to end the way it did, with someone else's blood on her hands. Because if it hadn't, it would be an admission of her defeat, an admission that she was something less than she began.

That she was never really a Junker at all.

Oasis is making her soft. 

She has to prove that it isn't.

But it's infinitely more complicated than that alone. Too complicated to speak aloud, to give admission that she may be more scared than angry. Because this is sanding away all the rough edges that make it hard for someone back home to put her in the ground. Because some day she may wake up and look in the mirror, see someone she doesn't recognize any longer.

And at the same time, Jack fears that Oasis will never make her soft _enough_. That there will always be too much blackpowder and diesel in her veins to _make this work_. That she's still too hard in all the wrong ways, and that someday, Moira will be tired of putting in stitches, of tending to cuts and scrapes and bruises. 

That lately when her thoughts start to fracture and break apart, glittering and raw like the shards of bloodied glass on the machine shop floor, all she can think of is the thousand, thousand ways she'll never be Angela Ziegler. 

Ziegler is many things. Her initial opinion was _criminally boring_. Too outwardly perfect. Too serene. Bland. Predictable. Intrusive in a way that was a non-factor, non-threatening. But it is. Because something in Ziegler was enough to keep Moira for _eight years_.

_You do not know Moira O'Deorain better in six months than I did in eight years_.

Eight years is an awfully long time to know someone. And Ziegler is everything that she isn't. The nail in the leaden coffin, Jack has never been so certain as she was looking into those painfully blue eyes not a week past that the Swiss doctor wants Moira _back_. 

It feels like an ember caught in her throat every time she thinks about it. She's starting to recognize the emotion that comes with it as jealousy, and it has her hackles up, as it did at the arrival of Satya Vaswani. It's new. She isn't fond of it. Jealous isn't something that she _does_. It wasn't when she and Jaeden were _off_ instead of _on_ , and it shouldn't be now. But it's there, insidious and whispering in her ear.

All glitteringly dark eyes and blood-flecked copper complexion, smelling of metal and machine oil, faintly of citrus and clove, Jack has no idea what to do about the issue, but is aware of what she _wants to do about it_. She forgoes the tie this time, wrapping her hand in the collar of the taller woman's shirt and pulling _down_ until their lips meet. 

The hand that comes to rest at her side is all talons, the tips of the other's nails biting into the skin as their teeth click once, lightly, before they readjust. Whiskey and mint make a distinct counterpoint to the subtle hint of copper, and she hisses softly when her shoulders come flush with the wall, the glass at the back of one grinding in a little deeper. 

When the taller woman draws back, if only slightly, it's to her disappointment, and she meets mismatched eyes with night-dark, brushes her nose lightly to a freckled one and whispers near the curve of the other's lips, "He doesn't get to talk shit and _walk_. That's not how _this works_."

_Selfish._ She's being selfish. Flicks a dark gaze to the curve of the taller woman's mouth, which is smeared with crimson at one corner now, and back up to that mismatched gaze. Hasn't released her hold on the taller woman's collar at all, and knows that will be stained as well, and starts to lean back up before the cooler of those hands finds its way beneath her jaw. Long fingers feel like ice where they curl lightly around her throat, and that holds her still. For now. Makes her well aware of how serious Moira is right now. 

" _Jacqueline_ ," the intonation of her name carries a warning note, makes her bristle a little as those vividly scarlet and ocean-blue eyes search her own. There's a slow exhalation, one that accompanies the way that gaze casts over her countenance, the bloodied lip, the blackened eye, that tracks the smaller scrapes and abrasions as if cataloguing them before it drifts back to hers. "It would take almost _nothing_ for you to lose your employment within the Ministries. The board is already hesitant regarding the Junker program. It took _significant_ coercion to approve even a temporary transfer."

When her eyes drift back to the corner of the taller woman's lips, the hand at her throat tenses faintly, applies a faint pressure that makes them snap back up. Only enough to get her attention. 

"You are putting all of this in jeopardy," is what falls like a stone from Moira's lips, feels like it wraps around her neck to weight her down. The edge of a taloned nail drifts slowly beneath her jaw, and she feels of a sudden like an animal being cornered, measured and quartered before it has even been brought low.

"You cannot simply resort to _fisticuffs_ to settle a workplace dispute. Not here," It doesn't prepare her for the way that angular countenance draws nearer hers, then to the side, or the warm, low lilt that asks near her ear, "What are you trying to _prove_?"

Nothing prepares her for that. It's a wounding blow, a stone from a sling at blinding speeds. It feels like it cuts her open, leaves her feeling exposed in a way she doesn't want to think about, like that taloned hand were holding her heart in it, studying it for flaws and imperfections. 

All of her walls slam up at a blinding speed at that instant, tower around her like the red stone cliffs of Junkertown, and if the look that overtakes those mismatched eyes, searching her expression from behind coppery lashes, is any indication, it is a reaction that is neither anticipated nor appreciated in the slightest. 

"What do you want me to do, then?" When Jack speaks, her words sound rougher than she anticipated, as if they found their way from the smoke and fire that she feels in her lungs. She can't look Moira in the eye, and Moira isn't _trying_ to look anywhere else. Her chin lifts, a slip of teeth revealed in an expression that certainly isn't a smile as she asks, "Take their _shit_? Let Abraham _fucking_ Marks walk over me like he's _anything_?"

" _Fuck that_ ," the last words fall in tandem with her bloodied fingertips finding the other's wrist, curling around it as if to draw the hand from her throat. It doesn't move, and she's starting to feel trapped in a way that she _doesn't like_.

It's something in the way that the taller woman is looking at her right now. As if they were never on equal footing. As if the other were a sleek, well-kept hunting hound and she's a wild animal prowling on the outskirts of a campfire, incandescent colour cast from her eyes when they catch the light. 

There's a slow curling of long fingers at Moira's side, as if the other were fighting the urge to do something. Her shoulders tense in response, coppery hands light around the knuckles from how tightly they close, one around the other's wrist and the other into a fist. She tries to breathe in, breathe out, steady a measure of her mind. Count to ten. Count to ten _again_.

"An easily handled internal affair," Moira asserts without so much as batting an eye, that cool façade unbreakable at current. Imperious, as if the other woman were certain of faults in the argument presented to her and unmoved in the face of them. "Which, reported to your supervisor instead of taken into your own hands, could have been handled within the day and _without incident_. Which would not risk your ability to _remain_ within the university."

_You don't understand_ , is what she wishes she could say in so many words. 

_You'll never understand_ is what the voice in her head whispers insidiously. And maybe Moira never will. Never will understand why it has to be like this. Why she can't let it go, let him walk, and not look over her shoulder every time she goes back to Junkertown until it's settled _for good_.

_Blood on her teeth and red dirt in her eyes, the sharp collision of a boot with her ribs so hard that something snaps beneath the skin. The high cost of being associated with the Queen. Of being the easier of the two targets._

The switch in her brain flips, and she leans subtly forward instead of backwards, chin lifting as she finally, finally meets the other's gaze, and god, those eyes. They're beautiful, the colour of wine and the sea, but she's certain from the look in them that neither of them _like_ what they see in one another right now. All she knows is that with ever second that ticks by, the hand around her throat is making her feel less in control and she _needs to be_.

"Get off," is what Jack demands in a rough cadence, night-dark eyes holding the other's gaze pointedly while she waits for that hand to move. When it doesn't, the request unheeded, her next move is perhaps...less than prudent. An attempt to extricate herself, twisting sharply as she moves as if to skirt around the taller woman, tries to force that hand back. Snaps out in an angry voice, "Get the _fuck_ off of me."

Her second scrap for the day is all the more intense than the first. Not for its innate violence, but in the amount of collateral damage that they leave around them. It's emotional. It hits hard and hits home, and it leaves wreckage all around them that can't be seen, only _felt_.

It starts simply, with Jack ducking under the taller woman's arm to head toward the door. With a lavender-tinted hand, cool to the touch, which catches her by the elbow to draw her up short of it, halt her exit. It doesn't take a turn until she's yanked back around to face the geneticist, a forceful movement that dredges up a whole host of instincts as old as a girl who grew up in Junkertown. 

Jack _swings_. 

The results are concussive. Knuckles don't hit, but slam through wisps of black mist an instant before the other woman reappears behind her. The situation doesn't so much devolve as it _disintegrates_.

A catastrophic breakdown.

Nuclear fallout.

They are two parts blackpowder and both of them are matches. Both of them are burning. It's written in the firm hands seeking a hold on her and the slam of an elbow back, in a scrap that isn't so much innate violence as it is trying to _seize control_ and keep it. 

Jack doesn't stop. Can't. Feels the need to keep on her feet and keep those taloned hands off of her like a primordial instinct. She doesn't stop when they collide with the shelves and cleaning supplies clatter to the ground, sharp with the scent of lemon. She doesn't stop when the taller woman goes in for a grapple, or when her teeth sink into the other's hand, or when her lip splits back open because she gets _boxed_ for it.

She doesn't stop at the swift uptick of _angry Gaeilge_. She wants _out_. Wants it in the way that she wanted to see the sun in a ratty little bunker outside Junkertown. Wants it like she wanted just one more day, crawling through the tangled wires of the Stonefish while the radiation leeched into her bones. 

Jack doesn't stop until it's _lost_. Until she hits the metal wall face-first with sufficient force to spark stars behind her eyes and make her ears ring. When one of Moira's hands, tangled impossibly in her hair, holds her there - her cheek pressed _hard_ into the cool, flat surface to prevent her from rounding on the other again. When the other has ahold of her wrist, her arm twisted up behind her with a tall frame angled into her back to keep her _still_.

When she pushes back, a white-hot lance of pain arcs from her elbow to her shoulder, and she knows without a shadow of a doubt that it wouldn't take much more torque to break the limb or wrench it from the socket. There's no way that Moira _doesn't_ know that. 

Another attempt to turn earns her a sudden, warning _shake_ from the taller woman behind her, a sharp intonation of, " _Giotán tú dom_ ," stirring in her hair. It's chased by a sharper, " _Cad atá cearr leat_?"  
** You bit me // What is wrong with you?

" _Fuck you_ ," Jack all but hisses out as another jolt of pain jumps up her arm. Breath shuddering in her chest, every exhalation casts opaque fog over the cool metal her face is pressed against, moisture condensing upon it. It isn't necessary to know what the other woman said to understand the sentiment. 

Never has she felt so much like a rabbit in a field.

She didn't know that Moira was the _snare_.

If rational thought were a reality, it may occur to her that there is some self-control in the way the geneticist is handling it. That in a spate of small mercies, there is no increase in the pressure needed to _hold her_ there, no retaliation in violence and extracted pain for anything that has led up to this moment. In the stillness between them, there's only an unpleasant heat where they touch, sweat prickling between her shoulders, and the shudder of harsh breathing as she struggles to catch her breath.

She can hear the taller woman trying to do the same. 

The silence is full, heavy with the other woman's thoughts as Moira attempts to dissect where, exactly, all of this went so dreadfully wrong. 

When the taller woman does speak, no amount of pleasure in that low, lilting timbre, that husky voice is nonetheless gentler than she thought it may be when it starts to say her name, "Jacq-"

"I said _fuck you_ ," Jack backs the words with a concussive force, enunciating every syllable with as much vitriol as she can muster. Adrenaline is a bright and bitter in her veins, anger sizzling after it, and all she can focus on is the other's breath in her hair, the lanky frame levered against her own to keep it there, the sudden tightness of her throat and the warm, prickling feeling at the corners of her eyes. 

Her slim frame tenses further and there's a slow exhalation from the taller woman, Moira's timbre carrying an undercurrent that she doesn't like _at all_ , one that feels like it's digging around under her skin, "Jacqueline. I don't _want_ to hurt you."

What passes between them, unsaid, is: _But I will if I have to_.

She licks her lips slowly, tastes blood and salt and feels the sharp sting of where the lower one has split open. When she breathes in, her inhalation carries the scent of burnt amber and bergamot melding with citrus and clove, machine oil and superheated metal. 

"Rabbit." 

God, it's so much gentler this time and that's somehow _worse_. Feels like a cast stone, fracturing something in her chest and sending a spiderweb of cracks outward from the centre. It aches with the gentleness of the words, with the soft, slow exhalation in the vicinity of her temple. 

That warm, liquid feeling in her eyes spills over, trails down her cheeks. It doesn't make her feel any _less_ of anything. It just hurts, in a way that's somehow worse than the ache in her knuckles, her split lip, the bristling bite of glass beneath her skin. 

_It just hurts_.

"You don't understand," Jack breathes out quietly, her voice constricted, strained in a way that she hates the sound of. The hand in her hair loosens somewhat at that, followed by the one at her wrist, though neither of them relinquish their hold in entirety. Those long fingers feel like ice where they touch her coppery skin.

Timbre still gentle, patient in a way that isn't warranted, that low lilt sounds near her ear, "Then help me understand."

She sucks in a slow, shaky breath at that, the sound of her exhalation shuddering against the sheet metal. Dark lashes, beaded with moisture, flutter closed when a light kiss finds the nape of her neck, a chaste thing that makes her throat constrict further. What's falling to the floor now isn't just blood, droplets of saltwater tinged in pink where they stain the polished metal underfoot. 

"I don't," the words are thick when she finds them, shudder and stop as Jack draws in a breath, her eyes a sliver of darkness when they slip open once more, limned in red. "I don't have the _luxury_ of playing paper-pusher with him. That's not how Junkertown _works_."

Adrenaline isn't what's making her fingertips tremble anymore. 

There's a rough edge to her voice now, it's once-smooth cadence wrought to rust and wind-worn metal as she confides, "I have to try to live there when all this shit is done. I have to _go back_ when Oasis won't have us anymore."

It feels like remnants of shrapnel, burrowed beneath the flesh and bone too close to the heart, the metal shards made out of unpleasant truths. Wondering how long it will be until it burrows the final measure home, pierces something vital and takes her away with it.

There's a reassuring pressure where those cool hands are, and she can feel her resolve slipping at a breakneck pace. Can hear the slow inhalation that indicates Moira is about to say something. The timbre of the taller woman's voice is low, like whiskey and smoke, "All you are accomplishing, Jacqueline, is a hastening the future you foresee. You are showing them once again that Junkers are a _liability_ and not an _asset_."

She can't help but to draw in a shaky breath at that, feels it shudder in her chest. Feels it viscerally, as if those taloned hands had roved over her to find the seams of old scars and then meticulously pried them open one by one to leave her raw and bloody. It aches like someone buried a grenade in her chest, and of a sudden all she can hear is the echoes of the explosion it might cause. The snapping of bones like dry branches off metal walls. The taste of rust and blood on her teeth. 

All she can remember is how it felt when Jamie carried her out of the bunker and into the Outback sun. It burned on her skin. It burned like the radiation rooted in her bones.

When the door swings open, bathing the interior of the closet in the bright luminescence of the overhead lights, harsh and white, Jack almost jumps out of her goddamn skin. She almost forgets how to breathe, and she can tell that Moira feels it where those long hands still rest, albeit much more lightly than before. 

"I finished the calculations and..."

The wire-tight tension in her jaw doesn't leave her. Neither does the sharp, sick ache in her chest that's starting to travel down her limbs. 

The sound of the Vishkar's voice isn't helping, not that Jack needs to see who is lingering in the door to know that they pose no tangible threat. She doesn't want to think about how this must look from the outside: her slim frame held up against the wall like a wild animal that needs to be kept at arm's length. The way her shoulders are shaking. The blood that most assuredly has smudged Moira's suit. 

Her only saving grace in this is the fact that her head is turned away from the door.

Satya fucking Vaswani does not need to see her cry.

No one does. No one needs to see her _weak_.

There's a decided pause in which none of them move, after which Satya inquires slowly, a tangible concern in her voice for what must have transpired here, "I will fetch security for you."

It's said with finality, as if the only possible solution is that Jack is a wild dog and needs to be put down. 

"That will hardly be necessary," Moira has regained a smooth measure of composure, and she can feel the subtle shift in the other's posture behind her, though those slender hands don't retreat just yet. There's a faint, reassuring pressure from them instead of a vice-like grip, however, and she'll take it for what it is. "The situation is well in hand, Miss Vaswani. Thank you. We will only be a moment longer."

"If you are certain," Satya, on the other hand, doesn't sound convinced of that in the slightest, a more than dubious note touching the other woman's voice.

"I am, though your concern is appreciated. If you would care to adjourn to the Genetics lab, I can meet you there shortly to discuss the details of the project further," Moira's voice is more collected than it should be. All that repeats in her head is the way it said _liability_.

The sound of heels clicking on the hard metal doesn't come soon enough for her liking, but when it does, it travels away from them. The light dims as the closet door swings back shut once more, and that's slightly more tolerable. She can't stop trembling, tries to focus on literally anything else. All she can smell is burning metal.

"I need you to put me down," Jack intones hoarsely once she's certain the other is gone, her throat constricting subtly. But those hands relax the last little measure, retreat from her person. So before she turns, she wraps her arms around herself to mask her trembling fingers, somewhat aware that her teeth are chattering as she lifts her chin in acknowledgement. 

When Moira reaches out as if to touch her cheek, she sees it out of the periphery, backs up up into the shelving so fast that the cans on it rattle. It doesn't go unnoticed that the geneticist freezes at that, but the last thing that she wants to do right now is _talk about it_. Instead, she snatches up her bloodied shirt from the floor and pulls it over her head, barely taking the time to yank it over her bruised ribcage.

"Come down to the lab, I can tend to the glass," accompanies the taller woman dropping that outstretched hand, the words surprisingly soft given their recent encounter. The low lilt of that voice carries a thousand things beneath it, glimmering just below the surface. 

She can't let any of them break it.

Ducking around Moira, the Junker jerks the door open and steps out into the machine shop. She doesn't look back. Her boots ring out on the metal walkway, quick steps that lead her out of the Ministry building, and it doesn't go unnoticed by her that security steps in line behind her on her way. 

She doesn't stop after that. Not for the comm chiming in her ear.

Not for Chance, who all but jogs to keep up with her, rattling off something about a temporary suspension and not stupid enough to put his hands on her to try and halt her. 

Small blessings.

Not to get her away bag from her apartment, tend the broken glass or bloodied countenance.

No.

She doesn't really know where she's going until her boots hit the ramp for an early transport to Rialto, which the omnic pilot starts to protest at her state until she produces the slim black card that ensures her passage goes undocumented and the fare is waived, courtesy of Akande. The omnic ushers her onto the shuttle without question.

Once she's in the back, out of view, she pulls her knees to her chest and wraps around them tightly. She counts to ten, then counts to ten, then counts to ten again.

She tries not to think about how close she was to jumping on a transport to Junkertown instead. Of standing on the red stone cliffs in the heat of the Australian summer. Of going back to the bunker near the sea and staying there until her thoughts stopped spinning.

When she looks at the comm, she has twenty-two missed messages.

Seventeen of them are from Moira.

She turns it off.

\---

Moira O'Deorain should be reviewing the schematics for their medtech project with her Vishkar counterpart, but is not. 

Instead, the geneticist takes another sip of good Irish whiskey from a neat crystal tumbler, pretending that she cannot hear her intern clattering around in the back of the lab, while Miss Vaswani inspects what is quite clearly a human-inflicted bite wound on her left hand. It did not break the skin, but she has little doubt that it would have if the angle was slightly different. 

As is, it is a ring of dark, purple-red indentations against her pale complexion surrounded by a palette of rich colour, from bruised blues to sickly hints of yellow around the edges. It's little secret that there is soft tissue damage given the amount of swelling, and if she were to bother with scans herself, she has no doubt that it would reveal several crushed veins in the finger in addition to joint damage near the knuckle.

Her innate biotics will heal the injury soon enough. 

It is not her injuries that she is preoccupied with at the current moment, a brilliant mind racing to analyze the reactions that she observed in the supply closet not long past. It has not gone unnoticed that Jacqueline has not arrived in the lab for medical attention.

Were there not so many personal factors and emotions involved, Moira may consider that a fascinating turn of events. As it is, all she can do is analyze it. _Why_. Why such a sudden, visceral reaction to everything that transpired between them in the supply closet down in the machine shop.

An involuntary hiss escapes her at the sudden, cool sensation of medigel on her skin, more unexpected than anything. Satya works in relative silence, smearing the cold ointment over the worst of the bruising to hasten the healing. It's a kind gesture.

"I hesitate to ask if this is...typical for your Australian counterpart," Satya's words are more a statement than a question, really, pleasantly accented as the other woman tests the articulation of her knuckle.

It elicits another soft hiss from her, before she withdraws from the Vishkar's ministrations, flexing her hand subtly to test for herself.

"It is the first such incident," Moira answers back in a low timbre, scarlet and blue eyes flicking to her comm when it chimes. With a thoughtful hum at the information relayed, she tucks it back into her jacket pocket and addresses Satya directly. "On her behalf, at least. Thank you, in any case, it feels a touch better already."

Without further acknowledgment of the incident in the shop, the geneticist straightens the front of her labcoat and inquires lightly, "Shall we discuss your calculations?"

\--- 

Jack is standing in front of the mirror in her Rialto bunk when the door - which she _is certain_ she locked - hisses open. It takes only a half-second's glance to determine who has entered, made all the easier by Olivia's slow mosey over to peer at her from quite near, her own dark eyes already fixated back upon her reflection in the silvered surface of the glass. Normally, she imagines, it would be strange to let yourself into someone's _locked_ bunk when they're half-dressed, standing in front of hte mirror in little more than tattered drab fatigues, a black bra, and tattoos.

But she determined a bit back that Olivia has no boundaries or conceivable sense of propriety, and thus far it's been harmless.

The dusting of fresh bruises evident on her coppery skin are stark even in the dimmed lights, and Jack can almost feel the weight of eyes on them. Does feel the brush of fingertips as they ghost over the marks on her ribcage, and flinches, almost dropping the tweezers she's been using to pick out glass into the sink.

"Stop it," Jack hisses out between her teeth when the pressure sends a dull ache up along the curve of her rib, wondering if one of them is fractured. The touch recedes almost immediately. 

For all Olivia appears affected by her tone or current state, they could be in the downtown market on Sunday looking for produce.

"So... _mija_ ," the hacker starts to speak after a moment, eyebrows climbing a little bit at circling around and finding another bruise on the back of Jack's shoulder to brush her fingertips over, just shy of a tattoo.

"I don't want to talk about it," is all Jack can manage to answer, glancing up toward the mirror to inspect the crescent of bruise at the curve of her eye socket, the colour of bruised wine, and then the butterfly bandage at her lip before she returns to the slow, methodical removal of glass from near her elbow. It clinks softly in the porcelain sink as another fragment finds its way therein.

Not bothering to comment further immediately, Liv instead scoots around her to root around in the medkit, finding another set of tweezers and setting about finding another chip of glass to draw out. When Jack hisses sharply between clenched teeth at the action, there's a brief, apologetic look for the action, but another crimson-stained chunk of glass finds its way into the softly-running water, swept away.

" _Lo siento_ ," comes a pre-emptive apology, the hacker wrinkling her nose sympathetically before starting to pull at another stubborn piece, one that feels much larger. A few seconds of silence before that one, too sizeable to fit down the drain, finds its way into the trash instead, and then Sombra muses, "I watched the security vids. You really had it out, huh?"

"Of course you fucking did," Jack murmurs, her dark eyes rolling subtly at that. She flicks off another bit of glass, then runs her fingertips lightly over her arm to check for any more. A soft sound of displeasure escapes her before she admits, "Yeah."

"You gonna answer your comm? She's worried about you," Liv presses lightly after that, pulling up a small violet-hued light on a comm unit and using it to inspect the back of her shoulder. "I am too. You're looking _rough_."

"Is that why you came down?" her reply feels stilted, and her slim frame stiffens at the inquiry, a whole host of unpleasant feelings coiling in her chest. Content that she's free of glass at current, the Junker withdraws to smear a layer of medigel and then sealant over the abrasions, then shrugs into a soft black shirt. 

"Now would I do that?" Sombra inquires in a cheeky cadence that indicates as if she didn't already know that the hacker absolutely would. Tossing down the tweezers, the other woman makes her way over to the bunk and kicks back comfortably on it, commenting further, " _We_ came to take you out, since you're... _de mal humor_. What'd you say? Drinks? Good company?"

There's the wink of a violet-blue eye at that, roguish as ever, and Jack snorts softly, fighting own a vague amusement as she moves to check her comm. She regrets checking the messages almost immediately, her throat constricting and a prickling warmth at the corners of her eyes at the last one on the screen.

m.odeorain: All that concerns me at current, Jacqueline, is whether or not you are alright.

Jack can't bring herself to answer. It feels too much like staring at the sun right now. Perhaps flying too near it, on wings of wax and feather, all too certain that the flame will consume everything its light falls upon soon enough. She closes the comm, slips it back into the pocket of her fatigues, and moves over toward her workstation to check the mock-up she's been working on for adjustments to Akande's gauntlet. 

"I could do drinks," the Junker acknowledges after a long moment. The room feels too small already, and the company isn't unwelcome. "What do you mean w-"

She jumps visibly at the soft sound of a throat being cleared near the door, heart hammering in her chest for several seconds before she places the slender silhouette in the dim light as Widowmaker.

"Jesus Christ," is all she manages to breathe out at that. "Fucking warn a girl."

" _Bonsoir, cherie_ ," comes a silken voice from near the door, glittering gold eyes further indicating the distinct presence of their resident sniper. While it wouldn't be the best, objectively, for anyone to notice the erstwhile assassin entering a room or finding a vantage point, the ease with which the other woman accomplishes a silent entrance never fails to make the hair rise on the back of her neck. 

"That's never going to get old," Sombra confides with a cheeky smile and a soft chuckle, stretching languidly atop the bunk. "Now hurry up and get ready. We're going to miss two-for-one shots if you mope around in here too long."

"You're a fucking brat," Jack answers back, feeling oddly at ease with the other woman in a way she hasn't accomplished with Widow. As if she were at home with her siblings, bullshitting about any number of things. Nonetheless, she moves back toward the mirror to apply a measure of concealer to the worst of the bruising.

They don't so much find a table at the club in downtown Rialto, as the current occupants are gently evicted, and as she sinks into her seat, she muses that it isn't the worst way to spend the evening. The small, circular table is etched with miscellany across the top, stained with beer, the work of countless other patrons over the years, and the nightly festivities are in full swing not long after they arrive, complete with a live band. 

The concealer that Jack is wearing has done a decent job of covering up the bruise beneath her eye, at least, although the cut to her lip is still a little puffy. It stings with each sip of her beverage, alcohol burning subtly beneath the skin when it makes contact. It's unpleasant. But not unpleasant enough to cease.

By the time the band hits their third song, Jack is on her second glass of whiskey, the good, smoky amber kind that Moira keeps on the bar at the other's Oasis home. It's a fact that, given the sharp, inquisitive look she received from their resident hacker, she knows has not gone unnoticed, but has thankfully gone unremarked upon. With a glass tumbler in one hand and a few small plates of bread and cheese, red grapes and mixed nuts stretching over the table, Jack hasn't said much since they arrived, but she has to admit to herself that it's better than sulking alone in her bunk.

Interest in Lacroix has thus far resulted in a whole host of unsolicited drinks delivered to their table for the _donna in blu_ , and each one has been met with a certain delight from Sombra, who hasn't had to pay for a single drink so far tonight by virtue of that very fact. Any and all potential suitors brave enough to venture by the table have been very cheerily rebuffed by the hacker, an arm around Widow's shoulders the entire time, which means that the night has largely gone without incident thus far.

And it's funny, in some ways. Watching them interact. Sombra laughing and joking as she sips at a half-dozen brightly-coloured and sugary concoctions from the bar to determine which of them she likes best. Every so often, the hacker will goad Widow into taking a tentative sip of one, which is always followed by wrinkled nose and the soft intonation of, " _Non_."

Slender, deadly, and columbine blue, the other woman look as if she could just as comfortably be relaxing at a Chateau in the French countryside, her elegant fingers curled around the delicate stem of a half-filled wineglass. The merlot that Lacroix ordered was the most expensive on the list, and its arrival was still accompanied by a subtle sense of disapproval, as if it were a travesty that this was the establishment's finest offering. 

They make for an odd trio to be out on the town, although it'd make for a funny joke. A hacker, an assassin, and a Junker walk into a bar. Jack snorts softly at the thought. But honestly, the night hasn't been half bad so far, and it's drawn some of her attention from the comm that keeps buzzing in her pocket. There's a part of her that's half-tempted to drop it into her glass and fry the circuitry, but instead, she tips back the remainder of her beverage and signals the server for another one. 

The light touch to her elbow jars her out of her thoughts, the scent of fruit and liquor on Sombra's words as the hacker asks at close proximity, above the thrum of the music, "You want to talk about it, _mija_? I know she's not the easiest all the time, and I'm a good listener, _si_?" 

A cheeky wink again, those violet-blue eyes on her as Sombra places a hand over her own heart and promises, "Your secrets couldn't be anywhere safer than the Sombra Collective."

Jack licks her lips slowly, feels the sting of the lower one more profoundly when another tumbler of whiskey is slid in her direction. She takes a slower, much smaller sip this time, sinking back in her seat as she mulls over her thoughts. Everything aches, and the low-burning, ill feeling still remains from Oasis, threatens to flare up again the longer she dwells on it. 

Her voice is smoother than she thought it might be when she turns her head to confess, "Junker bullshit. He was talking shit about her to fuck with me, so I threw him some knuckles. Would've done worse to him in Junkertown. Would've had to."

Exhaling in a sigh, Jack looks down into her glass, swirling the amber liquid therein before musing, "It's a lot of things. I don't fucking know, mate."

There's a gleam in those violet-blue eyes then, an arm that drapes carefully around her shoulders as Olivia encourages, "Why don't you start with one, _mija_? And we'll see where the night takes us."

Her rings clink on the glass as she tips it back, the remainder of the tumbler of whiskey gone in a smooth motion before she sets the empty tumbler onto the table with a 'click'. Pointing at it as the band picks up, the Junker intones, "Angela fucking Ziegler."

\--- 

It has been nothing short of a trying twenty-four hours. That, at least, is what Moira O'Deorain tells herself in the downplay of her day, pacing in the study on the patio on her third cigarette and second glass of whiskey in the chill autumn night. She muses to herself that perhaps that is the very reason that in spite of her hectic schedule of Ministry appointments and lab supervision, that she opted to return to her Oasis home after hours for what is the first time in a week and a half. 

It is a convenient enough lie. That a small, insidious part of her brain insisted that Jacqueline may show up should be a non-factor.

In the bite of the autumn evening, exhaling a coil of white-blue smoke into the cold air and then grinding out the remnants of her cigarette in an ashtray to place it the remainder in the receptacle, Moira almost wishes that she had not returned here for the eve. It is somehow making the silence all the more poignant. 

Which is foolish. Hypocritical, even. She is well aware of that. She had enacted a Talon-mandated month of silence on Jacqueline in the aftermath of Overwatch's meddling, albeit at Akande's request. There is no place for her to feel any sort of way over a few hours of unanswered communications, no matter what the circumstance. 

There was a time that she would never have considered her home to be empty. It always meant little to her, no more than a proverbial four walls in which to rest in the brief moments between her work. Of so much less importance than the laboratory or the headquarters in Rialto. Another collection of aesthetically decorated rooms that were little more than that. Tonight, looking in through the glass doors, it reads to her like a museum. And it feels _lonely_ , an emotion she has been careful not to contend with in longer than she can remember.

Since Angela.

It isn't even so much that Jacqueline ever spends much time here. Neither of them do. Their lives are an artfully organized chaos, and what time they do share is found in the scarce moments between. The aftermath of Junkertown. A chime at her office door at three in the morning, often leaving the Junker asleep on the couch while she tends to her experiments. But still, they seek each other out when they can. And is that not enough?

She tries to quell the bitter feeling in her stomach that tells her it is not.

Reality is less pleasant than the fiction she would care to spin of it.

For perhaps the tenth time since she returned home, Moira checks her comm unit. No new messages. Not that she truly anticipates there will be, after the last several have gone unanswered. After all, Jacqueline never arrived in the medical bay, did she? And she cannot bring herself to believe that is for the best, having seen firsthand how the majority of Junkers tend to patching themselves up. It involves far too much alcohol and far less care for actual medicine than she would like.

She cannot help but to focus on the sight of all that broken glass, the slow drip of crimson from shaking, coppery hands. She cannot help but to focus on it with the intensity of any doctor that is worth their salt, and she believes she should have tended to the matter then. But the best of plans, as always, are only available in hindsight. 

Her attention snaps up at the sound of the doorbell chiming, and she opens the sliding glass doors to step back into her home, making her way to the front of the house to check the cameras before releasing the security locks on the door. A brief flicker of hope, all the tenuous life of a candle-flame, lives in her before she sees that it is, in fact, Gabriel.

When she pulls the door open for him, his dimly-lit eyes are burning crimson beneath the hood of a dark-knit sweater. He is not entirely what she anticipated on her doorstep at this time of night, but a welcome sight regardless, though the message it sends is not lost. Gabriel is an indication that things are worse than she hypothesized them being. 

He offers a wry smile nonetheless, a six-pack of beer bottles in one hand lifted to show her and a cardboard box of what she has to assume is cheap, atrociously greasy pizza in the other. With a nod of his head, Talon's Reaper asks in a hollow-edged timbre, "How bad you fuck it up this time?"

Her coppery lashes flutter at that question, a sharp feeling in her throat as she tips her head back to look above him and simply sighs. She steps out of the way regardless, allowing him into her home like the old friend he undeniably is. 

"That's promising," Gabriel rasps around a soft chuckle, shaking his head as he makes his way toward the living room, presumably to set down his parcels while she relocks the door.

"There are coasters on the bar, Gabriel," she calls after him, rekeying the security code and hearing him laugh in that general direction.

This was more typical of them in the Blackwatch Era. In the wake of what could be classified as a difficult mission, or perhaps if she were in the midst of a spat with Angela or he with Morrison. Occasionally if Jesse had done something particularly ignorant. It would be little surprise on those evenings to hear the door chime in their Blackwatch quarters and find one or the other of them on the threshold, drinks in one hand and dinner in the other. Given the day's events, Moira surmises that she should be less surprised to see him.

It's not a tradition she thought would be revisited in Oasis, of all places. 

"You're so goddamn pretentious," Gabriel's voice is gruff, but harbors a friendly teasing as she walks in to see him setting down marble coasters, a few underneath the bottles he's brought. A few underneath paper napkins, on which he places an undeniably greasy box.

A sharp snort escapes her at that, scarlet and blue eyes dismissive of the implication as she moves back over to the bar and finds him a bottle-opener, electing to pass it over as she settles onto the couch. Once he's finished, uncapped a bottle for himself and one for her, and grabbed a slice out of the grease-ridden pizza she is most certainly not eating any of, he drops onto the couch beside her, jostling her shoulder with a shove of his own. 

Whiskey set aside for the time being, Moira takes a pull from the bottle he's handed her, wrinkling her freckled nose in distaste shortly afterwards.

"This is dreadful," she confides in a low lilt, a little scoff escaping her afterwards.

"You always say that," Gabriel answers around a mouthful of pizza, searching up the remote from the nearby stand and turning on the vidscreen. "Never stopped you drinking it."

He finds an obscure paranormal investigation vid to pull up in the background. The sort that, historically speaking, she spends her time thoroughly debunking and he spends his time being cross that she's doing it while they watch.

Pushing his hood back to scratch lightly at his scalp, Gabriel slouches in his seat comfortably, observing the vid in silence for a few minutes before he advises, "Your girl's in Rialto." Another several seconds of quiet before he takes another bite of pizza and murmurs, "Liv said it was almost Junkertown. What'd you do?"

"Your faith in me never fails to astound," Moira answers with obvious displeasure, another slow exhalation escaping her before she takes another sip of her beer. 

"I'm just giving you shit and you know it," he retorts without hesitation, a snort sounding from him before his crimson gaze settles on her. The shallow scars on his ashen-brown countenance are all the more prominent in this lighting.

Moira remembers patching most of them. In any case, it's almost possible to hold onto her foul mood in Gabriel's presence, and she relinquishes it more easily than she thought she would, opting instead to stretch her arms above her head until she hears a vertebrae pop, then sink into her seat a measure in mimicry of him. Stretching her long legs out and resting her head to the back of the couch, she exhales softly once more.

"We had an altercation following a _brawl_ she started with another Junker," Moira muses lowly after a time. She takes another slow sip of her beer, finding that the taste has not grown on her. "I had to hold her against the wall after she _bit me_ , Gabriel. Which I presume has not been a part of your training sessions if there are any small mercies."

He has the audacity to chuckle at that, the sound worn raspy around the edges, and takes a pull of his beverage before answering, "She's scrappy. You sure know how to pick em, don't you?"

At a pointed look from her, he holds up his hands placatingly and says, "She bit Ziegler, too, didn't she? Sensing a theme."

"And Morrison," Moira confides as if that were the natural progression of the conversation.

"Good kid," Reyes muses in seemingly good humor, a gruff note to his voice as he remarks, "Know what I'm getting you for Christmas now."

She hums thoughtfully at that, mismatched eyes fixated on the vidscreen for the time being. A brow arches as she inquires simply, "Biteguard?"

"Rabies booster," he quips back, clinking his beer bottle to hers in a makeshift toast an clearly pleased with himself. "Maybe tetanus, too. You never fucking know with Junkers."

A husky laugh escapes her at that, Moira musing with a current of amusement, "You are a dreadful creature. Heaven knows why I associate with you."

"Heaven has nothing to do with it," Gabriel responds with a snort of mirth, turning the volume on their vid up a little bit before taking another bite of pizza. He wipes a bit of grease from his chin with a napkin before stating, "Already told you that you've got awful taste."

"Morrison," she answers pointedly.

"Ziegler," comes his response.

"Singh," the geneticist counters smoothly.

" _Amari_ ," Gabriel enunciates with vast satisfaction.

She sniffs at that, quips lightly, "Ogundimu."

There's an instant of silence before Gabriel laughs aloud at that, the raspy sound echoing through the room as the wisps of shadow at the collar of his sweater kick up slightly. A crooked grin touches his ash-brown countenance before he advises, "I'm telling him you said that."

A hint of a smirk touches her lips.

At the sound of his comm chiming, Gabriel pulls it out of his pocket and flips it open, scanning over a few messages before he chuckles, "Bless Liv."

She arches a brow.

Gabriel tosses her the comm without ceremony, and it falls to the couch when she fails to catch it, necessitating rooting around for it between the cushions. He intones in a raspy timbre, "They have your girl out on the town and she's being nosy. Said, and I quote, _I'm not letting this ship die on my watch_." 

He nods toward the comm, advising, "I'm supposed to filter, but you're a big girl. Though, might make a suggestion."

Another little scoff escapes her at the notion. Of course Olivia would meddle. Of course Gabriel has advice. What is perhaps more surprising, Moira notes at flipping the comm open, as Reyes leans over to glance at it as well as three more messages come through, is the sheer influx of data the hacker is sending her all at once.

"Just throwing this out there," Gabriel remarks as she skims over it. Just enough to pick out the words _Ziegler_ and _Junkertown_ and _not good enough_ and _loves her_ , the latter of which elicits a strange sensation in the vicinity of her chest. He bumps her shoulder with his own, waiting until he has her attention to confide, "You could just talk to her."

"She is not responding to my messages," Moira muses in response, the words sounding a little more bitter than she had intended by far. "I have attempted."

"Yeah. But what about hopping on a transport to another country doesn't say _I need a little space_ , M?" Gabriel asks in turn, his scarred brow arching in turn. Leaning forward with a soft grunt, he finds another piece of pizza before slumping back into the cushions with more contended sound. "Been working with her a lot at HQ. She reminds me a bit of Jesse."

That earns him a sharp look, her mismatched eyes daring him to continue the statement. He of course does, because when has Gabriel ever heeded a warning she offered, merely offering her a crooked grin as if knowing that had gotten under her skin. 

He points out pragmatically, "Knew that would get you. But all bluster on the outside, lot bottled up inside. Not knowing what to do about it. Doesn't help that she's _young_."

She doesn't have anything to say about that, but does close the comm unit and pass it back to him. A small concession.

He nudges her arm again, nods towards the vidscreen as he advises, "Just talk to her. It'll turn out."

There's a pause in which his crooked grin returns, and Moira knows he's about to say something dreadful.

"Maybe don't...you know...throw her against the wall like a perp this time, though," Gabriel chuckles out in that raspy timbre. "Unless you're into that shit."

" _Gabriel_."

He laughs.

\---

It's colder than Jack thought it would be when she descends out of the transport _back to Oasis_ , the chill of an artificial prevalent as it tilts swiftly toward the heart of winter. It stings at her face and hand, anywhere her coppery skin is exposed, and she feels a compulsion to draw the hood of her sweater up and bury her hands in her pockets, but only does the latter.

It was so much warmer in Rialto. 

There's a small part of her that's tempted to turn back around, hop back up that ramp and into the transport, and head back. Spend the evening warm near the canalside, sharing a bottle or two of wine with Widow and Sombra. It had been a nice break, to be honest, and while she's not certain that Lacroix ever really warms up to anyone, Jack is starting to really enjoy spending time with Liv at the very least. Maybe they can get her back in time to hop back out on the town.

It's the last coherent thought she has before she stops, frozen in place at the base of the ramp as she looks toward the tram. Between it and where she is, a line of cars stretches as far as she can see, ready to pick up travelers and escort them to any number of destinations within the city. Amidst the gleaming host of other vehicles, the sleek polish of a familiar towncar. The more familiar silhouette of an impossibly tall woman beside it, waiting patiently. Waiting for her.

Jack has not responded to any of the other woman's messages since she left. Wasn't sure what to say or how to say it, and sure as shit isn't sure now.

Her heart starts to beat a little faster when their eyes meet across the way, scarlet and blue to night-dark, and anxiety creeps back in, bleeds back into her slim frame like the memory of their altercation in the machine shop not that long past. But there's a tilt to a ginger head, beckoning her nearer, and she finds herself taking slow steps in the other's direction with a certain hesitance.

What to expect, after disappearing to Italy for three days without a word?

There's a sharp juxtaposition between them when she draws closer. Her slim frame, all copper and rust, dressed in the customary black joggers and a hoodie covered in graffiti, speckles of multi-coloured paint neon and white across it, a military bag slung over her shoulder. Moira, impossibly tall and pale with cinnamon-tinted freckles at the bridge of the nose, looking fit to attend a formal event in a crisp white button-down underneath a grey cashmere sweater, slate-coloured slacks, polished shoes. A high-collared coat to ward against the chill, thick and heather gray. 

"Hey," is all she says after a long stretch of silence. When they're close. Close enough that she can reach out to touch the edge of that coat. She doesn't know why she does, but it's soft, feels warm between her chilled fingers. She doesn't know what to say either, feels as if the words are caught in her throat the way her eyes are caught on the top button of that coat instead of set to the other's gaze. 

"Hello, rabbit," comes the low, smooth lilt of a response, like the sound of rolling waves against a rocky shore. Like a home that she's never been to. Her eyes feel warm again, and the last thing that she wants to do is cry. But she can't quite fight it when a hand finds its way beneath her chin, tilts her features up to meet her gaze. 

" _Chaill mé tú_ ," the taller woman confides lowly, and a thumb slides over her cheekbone, carrying a tear away with it. " _Ná caoin_."  
** I missed you//Don't cry

That slender hand slips along her jaw and comes around, resting at the nape of her neck to draw her slightly forward, the gesture gentle. Jack isn't sure she could protest if she wanted to. She doesn't, in any case, but instead turns her features into the crook of the taller woman's shoulder and neck as Moira's other arm comes to rest around her shoulders. Moira smells of burnt amber and bergamot, and the low lilt of her voice sounds like _home_.

And God, she isn't sure when that happened.

Jack isn't certain that she _cares_ , as her arms slide around the taller woman and hold tightly, as if if she didn't Moira may turn to the black smoke she's seen before, dissipate on the icy wind with a sense of permanence. As if to assure her that this is still a real thing, tangible, one that she can reach out and feel.

She jumps suddenly when a car behind them lays on the horn, a low intonation of what she surmises is something incredibly unkind leveled at the driver in Gaielge when Moira's head turns that direction and accompanied by an imperious look in the driver's direction. There should be a hurry after that. There isn't.

Only the low lilt of what the taller woman confides into the shell of her ear on a warm breath, Moira musing with a soft certainty as those long fingers stroke through her hair, "We should talk, Jacqueline." There's a pause, only long enough to see the taller woman draw another breath and watch it coil, silver-white in the chill air, before a gentle request follows, "Come home with me?"

That shouldn't make her feel some sort of way, but it does, and her voice is thick when she answers, "Okay."

She makes no attempt to disentangle from the other. Not yet. Nestles a little nearer instead, and feels a comforting pressure from the taller woman's embrace in turn. When the driver behind them starts to lay on the horn again, she feels a spike of ire and hears the half-beat of a chuckle before Moira confides near her ear, "We should likely move."

A displeased sound escapes her at that, but Jack slips back a scarce measure. Subtly. In slow increments that are accompanied by a struggle for composure. When he doesn't let up on the horn, there's a moment in which her dark eyes flash, and Moira's hand tightens subtly at the back of her neck. Not hard. Just a reassurance, not a correction, though it does not go unnoticed that the taller woman keeps between her and the other car while opening the door for her. 

Which is good, really. Her nerves are still too raw for this shit. The Junker in her wants to pick up a loose brick and throttle it through his windshield. And getting arrested on her return to Oasis probably isn't the best way to kick things off. Especially not if they _need to talk_.

She lets Moira take her bag to stow it in the trunk and slides into the car, the leather seats warm and the heater kicked up much higher than she knows the taller woman likes it. Another small concession in a string of them, Jack thinks as she buckles in, exhales in a shaky breath. When the door opposite hers clicks open, Moira settles into the driver's seat, buckles in and checks the mirrors in a way that's faintly amusing.

Those mismatched eyes drift in her direction shortly after, a brow subtly arched at her expression, before the taller woman asks with a faint amusement, "What?"

Jack shakes her head, unable to fight that faint smile that curls over her features at the question. She waits until Moira has backed up the car and pulled into traffic to slide her arm onto the rest between them, turn her hand palm-up. 

There's a flick of mismatched eyes in that direction, and once they are safely onto the highway, watching the spires and sprawling architecture of Oasis rise up before them, long, cool fingers ghost over the palm of her hand.

She slides her own between them, threads them together as she sinks back slightly in her seat, and brushes her thumb lightly over knuckles braced along the centremost point in cooler metal. Moira won't be able to feel it, not as well as the other hand would, but it's something and she can feel the faint, careful increase in pressure, a reassurance that the other knows and is there.

It isn't everything. It's not a magic answer or a solution.

But it's enough.

It'll be alright.


	34. you hit me like a riptide. my body never noticed because you always kept it under disguise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ** serious conversations time  
> ** rabbits  
> ** questionable cooking techniques  
> ** Master Chef, this is not

Nothing ever ends up quite the way that she imagines. 

If Jack had been placing bets on how this would go, it would have been much different. Had this been different. Had Moira been someone else. Had she still been in Junkertown, this would have begun and ended in bed. It would be easier than the conversation that Moira wants to have with her, if, she recognizes, far less healthy. It would make it all less serious. And there was a time, not even that long past, when she would have considered it to be an acceptable loss. Before Moira, perhaps. And now? Now she's not sure what to think about it. 

Communication has never been _valued_ in the way that so many other things are in Junkertown. Combat ability. Resourcefulness. Survival skills. Jack can take apart a rifle and put it back together in less than a minute. She can improvise a wide range of ordnance from the items one might find in one's household. But she isn't entirely sure what to do with _what's coming_ , and finds that she _desperately wants to_.

What she does know is that even the relative silence, even the slow drive back to Oasis in which they don't speak much, is nice. It's comfortable in a way that she isn't used to. It bleeds some measure of the tension from her bones in the low music on the radio and the pervasive warmth until she turns into a drowsy, languid thing, struggling to keep her eyes open before they've even reached downtown. 

What she does know is that there's a warm, chaste kiss to her temple somewhere between her battle to keep her eyes open and when she drifts off in the passenger seat, weary from the past few days in Rialto. To be fair, she didn't sleep much while they were out on the town. She doesn't remember all of it. 

She, Liv, and Widow had been out every night on the town, much of which she has little recollection of. She's dimly aware that at some juncture of their excursion, they had managed to set a bar table on fire, and that it took them almost four hours one morning, after waking up in in the middle of a canal with a few empty bottles of Italian wine to determine how best to return a _borrowed_ gondola without causing a minor international incident.

They still haven't found Widow's heels.

Or her bootknife.

Or Liv's purse.

When a sound to her right makes her jump a little, she starts awake, expecting to see red stone desert and the twisted remnants of old Australian war mecha dotting the landscape, perhaps the walls of a tin trailer beneath the Junkertown cliffs. What she sees instead is the neatly-arrayed interior of Moira's garage in Oasis, the collar of a white button-down, the column of a pale neck as the taller woman leans over her to unbuckle the seatbelt. 

"Shh, rabbit," comes a low hush when Moira notices that she's stirred, a slender hand cupping her jaw for a moment, and the other's thumb stroking over her cheek. And then it drifts away, becomes the lean arms that hoist her up out of the car, a hip used to shut the car door afterwards. 

She's carried into the house, middling between awake and asleep, her head tucked into the warm crook of a lean shoulder and neck, where the fragrance of bergamot and burnt amber is the strongest. In the end, Jack is settled on the soft cushions of the couch in the living room, and when Moira moves to straighten, perhaps to draw down the grey knit blanket from the back of it over her, her fingers tangle drowsily at the hem of a grey cashmere sweater instead.

There's a long moment of silence at that, and her eyes open in response, only a sliver, only a hint of darkness and a shift of dark lashes upon her coppery complexion. Only enough to see the brief flicker of a smile that lives at the corner of the taller woman's mouth before Moira shakes her head slowly, and unhooks each fingertip from the cashmere one at a time. There's no verbal recognition of the action, but before long, she hears the sound of metal coming to rest on the nearby table. Jewelry being removed. And then a lanky frame settles snugly to her back, a lean arm curled arond her to pull her near. 

The lighting is already low, but at an utterance in Gaeilge that she couldn't understand on the best of days, it dims even a measure further, and then it's warm, and it's dark, and there's the soft breathing of someone behind her. 

The rest is easy. 

\--- 

When Jack stirs once more, languid and warm where she is, the comfortable presence behind her is gone and her slim frame is tangled in a knit grey blanket instead. The subtle fragrance of bergamot and burnt amber remains. It would be all too easy to go back to sleep, she muses, curled on the couch in the dim light, with the soothing sound of a distant storm, all rain and the low rumble of thunder, playing through the speakers.

She doubts that Moira has gone far, can see the datapad and the unfinished glass of whiskey on the nearby stand when she turns, rubbing her cheek with the back of her hand. The sun has set and the moon risen behind the blinds, and she wonders how long she's been out, stretches slowly and languidly, relaxing back in the cushions afterwards to listen to the ambient sound. 

After a time, the Junker moves. She finds her feet, follows them in the only direction the light still burns, the soft sound of utensils and pans heard the nearer she draws to the kitchen. The hallway outside it is illuminated in a perfect rectangle, lit as if from within by a beacon, and the remainder of the house is cool and quiet. Her dark eyes squinting against the light, not having adjusted to the discrepancy, she steps in and toward the tall silhouette in front of the stove.

The scarce tilt of Moira's head is indication well enough that the other woman heard her enter, but Jack doesn't say anything, instead crosses over to curl her fingers into a grey cashmere sweater, her brow coming to rest between lean shoulders as she stands there in silence for a half-beat. The words are difficult to find. She doesn't know how to say them.

She tries anyways, breathes them out quietly, only shy of a whisper into the space between the taller woman's shoulder-blades.

"I'm sorry."

And then again, hating the way that the words feel like sticks and rocks stuck in her throat, the way her eyes are threatening to prickle with warmth once against, but meaning it in a way that she wouldn't have before Oasis, Jack whispers, "I'm sorry. About happened in the shop. For just..."

There's a long stretch of silence at that, as if neither of them know quite what to do with it. As if, even something so simple as this, as an apology, was unforeseen between them. 

"Jacqueline." And God, the feather-soft way that Moira speaks her name is far too gentle to still feel like a bullet, but it does. 

When Moira moves, it's cautious, a slow turning of that impossibly tall form to face her as if she were something easily startled, may take to ground once more. And then the other takes her head gently in those slender hands, one pleasantly warm and the other cool to the touch, the ghost of talons felt near the corner of her jaw as the other cradles it gently as if with full knowledge that everything is this close to falling apart. That neither of them are yet sure how to put them back together. 

Jack cannot bring herself to look up. She doesn't want to see what rests behind coppery lashes, dwells in the scarlet and blue of those eyes. Isn't forced to, but feels nonetheless when a chaste kiss, warm and lingering, comes to rest to her forehead and the way the cooler of the taller woman's hands recedes to instead wrap around her shoulders, draw her close.

That low, lilting voice is so careful when it murmurs, " _Tá mo chroí istigh ionat._ Talk to me."  
** I love you//lit. My heart is within you

She mulls over her thoughts, winding her arms around Moira's waist in turn, her fingertips tangling in the hem of the other's sweater at first, then sneaking beneath it to rest only just so upon a freckle-dusted back, lightly on the warm skin she finds beneath it. Needing the contact in some inexorable way that she could not even begin to describe were it put to question. 

Dark eyes fix at a point near the collar of that sweater as she exhales a breath that she didn't know she was holding, and she feels a thumb brush gently beneath her lower lip, trace the curve of the upper to pause at the scar at the apex of it. 

"I feel like I'm drowning all the time," is what she whispers against it. It's an uncomfortable truth, one that makes her feel vulnerable, exposed in more ways than it doesn't. "Like maybe it's been always, but I never had enough time above water to notice."

"And nothing is ever _enough_ ," her dark eyes remain averted, the warmth in them threatening to spill over. It does, and she feels a droplet slide down her cheek, her jaw setting subtly. "Not the fucking Stonefish. Not m-"

She doesn't say it. Tries to ignore the way her throat has constricted, the way moisture has beaded in her dark lashes, and instead intones, "I'm giving everything I have and it doesn't _matter_. I spend half the week getting kicked into the dirt, and that's fine it's just..."

Another shaky breath finds her, "If I'm lucky the other half is _just not sleeping_ , and if I'm unlucky, I get shipped _home_ to get fucking _sniped_ at instead of being here. This is where I want to be and it _shouldn't be_."

Jack swipes at her face then, trying to quell some measure of the tears that have begun to fall. Her eyes sting, and she can feel the moisture on subtly calloused hands as she attempts to regain her composure. Her fingers curl into fists at her sides soon after, frustration a tangible thing that bleeds back in as she confides bitterly, "I can't even go to get coffee without running into Angela _fucking_ Ziegler."

Her breath is shuddering now, voice carrying an uncharacteristic tremor when she looks up at long last, finds mismatched eyes, so vivid in their wine-dark scarlet and ocean blue, and breathes out in utter frustration, "What if I don't know how to do this? What if all I know how to do is figh-"

The kiss that silences her is light, warm. It lingers gently in a way that makes her _stop_. Stand still. Account for other things, like the way a freckled nose has brushed to hers and coppery lashes rest not so far from her own. Like how all she can see between shaky breaths and the bitter feeling in her chest is a field of scarlet and blue, ocean-and-blood eyes that don't leave hers as Moira says quietly, "No."

"No?" is all she manages to whisper back, dark gaze no less lost as it searches back. 

"No," it's a touch more firm this time, that lowly lilting voice. It ebbs and flows around her. It rocks against the foundations as if she were the rocks and it the green salt sea calling her to a place that is so infinitely better than home. It's smoother than hers has been, followed by another gentle brush of lips to her own. 

There is a soft tinge of pink to Moira's countenance; it dusts over the bridge of the taller woman's nose and colours the high arch of those cheekbones. She isn't sure when it got there, can see a hint of red around the rim of the taller woman's eyes and that seems incongruent, shouldn't be there. She doesn't know why it is. 

A slender hand comes to rest at the nape of her neck and draws her subtly forward, Moira's head tucking over her own and a slow exhalation felt when it stirs in her hair, her own countenance pressed to a cashmere sweater and the pale, freckled hollow of a throat above it. That low timbre, all whiskey and smoke in the best fashion, carries a lulling note to it as the taller woman confides, "You are very brave, Jacqueline."

Dark eyes blink once, lashes brushing against the soft fabric of the taller woman's sweater, which wicks a scarce measure of moisture from them and mottles the grey cashmere a deeper heather hue. Jack licks her lips slowly, tasting salt and feeling _everything_ , as she attempts to formulate a response, her voice rough with emotion when she manages to rasp out a hesitant, "What?"

"It is a reason - one of many - that I am fond of you," comes a low admittance from Moira, accompanied by a light kiss to the shell of her ear. Long fingers brush gently to her upper arm through the soft fabric of her hoodie, and there's a smooth utterance of, "Solar wire." 

Then they find her wrist, the taller woman reciting, "Omnium."

Her side, at the curve of the ribs, "Shrapnel grenade."

One by one, the taller woman maps out the remnants that still exist as if she were gingerly picking through rubble, demarcating every location that yet bears a scar. A roadmap of violence that has thus far been endured and survived. When at long last a feather-light kiss is felt at her brow, a low, lilting voice confides there, "Stonefish."

"It is little secret that you are brave, brilliant, bolder by far than most," Moira intones in a low lilt, and she can feel herself drawn in by it, a measure of the fight that is intrinsic to her relinquished. "These are written all over you, plain to see. Tell me why you do not believe these to be _enough_."

When a taloned hand comes to rest at the line of her jaw, drifts subtly to grasp her chin, one sharp-edged nail ghosting along her skin as Moira tips her head up to make eye contact, the words that fall from the other's lips are heavy, leaden around her neck, "Be honest with me, _a rúnsearc_. What are you _trying to prove_?"

And what is she trying to prove? 

That Jacqueline Vargas isn't to be fucked with. That she can be knocked down and jump right back up, twice as ready for a scrap. That as far as life has taken her from Australia, she's still a Junker. That being a Junker doesn't mean she can't be something else, too. _Fuck_. That the insidious part of her mind that whispers it's _never enough_ can be sated with enough thrown fists.

Her hands creep up the taller woman's back, fingertips curling in the vicinity of the shoulders to feel the soft cashmere and lean contours of the musculature beneath. It feels anchoring, somehow, as if it were holding together too many scattered pieces for her to count and keeping her _here_. She counts to ten. Counts to ten again. 

All the fight goes out of her.

"That I deserve this," is what Jack answers on the third repetition, dark eyes flickering shut for an instant and then back open, if only a sliver. They still feel too warm. It's little surprise when they spill over, and she feels more than sees a cool thumb brush over her cheek. "Oasis. Talon. You. Us. I-"

She cuts off suddenly, throat constricting for an instant, then shakes her head and confides, "Fuck, babe." Then, with a little sound somewhere between amusement and the ache in her chest, "I wasn't even supposed to like it here, and now I'm trying to figure out how to make Oasis and Junkertown _work_."

There's a low sound from Moira at that, that angular countenance unreadable and still cast with hints of rose. Scarlet and blue eyes rapt upon hers, the other woman asks in turn, timbre utterly serious, but softer still than it should be, "Have I done something that makes you feel you don't have it?"

"No, I..." Jack murmurs and stops just as suddenly, a soft sound made in the back of her throat. "I don't know what to say about it."

There's a long moment of silence between them. 

One that sees those sharp features stony for a time, as if barricaded against something. As if Moira were weighing the implications of something heavily in her own mind, before that low lilt sounds once more, the words slow and patient, if uncharacteristically thick, "Jacqueline. Is this something that you want to work?"

And that.

Isn't that a question.

It's not one that she needs to think about. Not even one that needs consideration. The answer is nothing if not _known_. A snap decision. One she knows in the same, intrinsic way she knows how to take apart a tripwire mine. In the same way that she could disarm it with her eyes closed. But the question hits her as if she hadn't, as if her fingers had shaken and it had gone off anyway, rocketed through her to cast blood and blackpowder against the far wall.

It drives everything else from her mind in a riotous blast, asks only one thing beneath the other words.

_Is this what you really want?_

And for the first time that she can remember, Jack can see vulnerability in those scarlet and blue eyes, and the firm line of those shoulders is more consigned than it is ready to carry the world. There's a sheen of moisture to the taller woman's gaze, and she wonders how she missed that. Doesn't know when it arrived, but knows that it mirrors her own. That the Moira is fighting for composure, for control over a situation that the other does not perceive as controllable.

And she doesn't know in that moment, which is worse. The question, or that Moira doesn't know what the answer will be. Searching that mismatched gaze, bemusement touches her countenance for the first time as she asks simply, hushed and all but inaudible, "What?"

Then, her subtly calloused fingers reaching up to curl around a lavender-tinted wrist, she draws that taloned hand away from her features, releases it. Curls them into the collar of that white shirt instead, and pulls down, until that freckled countenance is much, much nearer her own. Until their brows touch, and she can pick out every errant freckle upon pale features like a far-flung star. 

She doesn't let go, whispers there instead, "Yes."

Dark eyes never breaking contact with mismatched, Jack repeats a second time as if the other may have missed it, "Yes, I fucking want this." What she breathes out next is simply, " _Fuck_ , babe."

She licks her lips slowly, moistening them. They feel dry of a sudden, as if she were not in climate-controlled Oasis but back in the red scrub. Her jaw sets subtly soon after, Junkertown threatening to bleed back in. It finds its way through the cracks in the gentlest way, like the sun rising over red stone cliffs, warm and golden. It finds a home in the line of her slender shoulders, in the way her subtly calloused, mechanic's fingers pull at that white collar to draw the taller woman down into a kiss that is nothing if not gentle.

One that says hello, and welcome home, and everything but _goodbye_ , because in Junkertown goodbye could be any time. It could be a misstep onto a compression mine. It could be a run-in with scavvers. It could be anything, and you can never say it unless you mean it. Unless you _have to_. So this between them remains a soft thing, a warm one, one that ebbs and flows like the tides but never pushes beyond tender. 

When she draws back, slowly, a freckled nose brushes gently to hers. Once. Twice, before there's another brief, stolen brush of lips to her own while she smooths the taller woman's collar. And that makes her lashes flutter for an instant before her dark eyes flick up to mismatched once more, finds their scarlet and blue steady in a way they were not only moments ago. 

"Good," Moira's timbre is low and smooth, the reverberations of it felt where they touch. Then, with considerably more relief, a tension in those lean shoulders loosening, " _Maith_."  
** Good

A slender hand rises to rake through coppery hair, and for an instant, Jack could swear the taller woman looks not only relieved but a bit abashed, the tinge of rose to the other's countenance all the more prominent. There's a distinct pause before Moira ventures lowly, "May I have an answer for an answer, Jacqueline?"

When she nods at that, she's guided across the kitchen far nearer to the sink, and hops up onto the counter beside it without protest, her socked feet dangling above the floor and shoulders settling to the cabinets as Moira turns on the faucet. 

"Why do you believe you don't deserve this? Oasis. Us. So many things, rabbit," Moira inquires in a low timbre, dampening a cloth beneath the water and then stepping over to stand between her knees. "I am uncertain how or when this transpired."

It's cool to the touch, used to wipe the remnants of salt from her tear-tracked face, and the action makes her throat feel tight. The tinge of colour to the cloth indicates it's taking her concealer off with it, and she feels that touch as it goes a bit gentler beneath her eye, still mottled with hints of purple and yellow beneath. 

A half-beat of amusement sounds from her, a solitary note of mirth before Jack allows her head to fall back against the cupboards and watches the taller woman with dark eyes, confides, "I'm a mess, babe. You might've noticed at some point."

But an answer for an answer is beyond that, and she knows it. Jack exhales slowly as a light pressure finds the bruising beneath her eye, knowing that the pleasant warmth that spreads beneath the skin means that the those marks will be gone now. Her fingertips find the front of Moira's sweater, idly picking a bit of lint from it as she confides, "This is going to sound...I don't know how this is going to sound. Oasis was supposed to be a fresh start."

"I probably shouldn't have lied on my application in that case, but," Jack murmurs, clicking her tongue to the roof of her mouth as her fingertips still and she meets the taller woman's gaze, feeling for once, oddly calm about the situation. "They weren't keen on ALF ties in the Ministries, which I guess I understand. I think half of us did."

There's no visible reaction at that. It's not surprising. A part of her has always known that Moira knew, and it's not as if she had attempted to hide it. Hell, she told her that her mother was ALF on the first date. Her hands need to be busy right now, so she focuses on straightening the taller woman's collar now, the sharp white button-down a pleasant accent to the remainder of the other's attire. 

"I used to hate it here. Thought about it like it was just a temp thing. A chance to make a quick buck to send back home. It was all too crisp and clean, and we were just Junkers, you know? You know some random fucker down on the street threw a coffee on Chance the first week we were here?" 

There's a scarce nod at that, not so much affirming that the other was aware as it is encouraging her to continue. So Jack does, exhaling slowly to steady herself before she muses, "And then I met you."

Those collar points are fascinating of a sudden, but she forces her gaze up, night-dark eyes finding that vivid scarlet and blue are on her already, their attention rapt. Her hand rises, subtly calloused fingertips tracing the line of an angular jaw and watching coppery lashes flutter an instant in response. 

Voice smoother now, Jack confides softly, "You fit here. You don't even have to try, but you make me want to. You're making me start to love this place, and it's terrifying because I don't know how to _be_ here." She makes an exasperated sound, quiet still, hands falling into her lap as she breathes out, "And I'm never going to be like where you've been."

You could hear a pin drop at that, and Moira's eyes narrow subtly as the other watches her for a long moment. There seems a moment of recognition, a sharp inhalation as those mismatched eyes tighten around the corners a touch further.

"Angela," is all that Moira intones then, the name low and incredulous in that lilting timbre. There's a minute in which the taller woman says nothing at all, but simply stares at nothing with a sort of subtle indignation. "Of course it would be _bloody Angela_."

A slow exhalation follows, tension in an angular jaw as the taller woman mulls it over, and it seems that a touch more colour bleeds into that pale complexion, most prominent at the cheekbones and at the tips of the ears. Those mismatched eyes flick down, then back up with a snapfire quickness, fast as a bullet fired from a high velocity rifle and with twice the impact. 

There's a certain vehemence to that low lilt when the taller woman confides to her, "Of course she would _meddle_. You do not need to be concerned about _Angela_. Do you not..."

A low sound of frustration cuts off the words as suddenly as they began, a muscle drawn taut in Moira's cheek for an instant as the other merely looks at her at a loss for words. Moira's hands come to rest flat to the counter to either side of her, and that ginger-crowned head bows nearer hers, strands of red-gold falling across the other's brow. The taller woman angles toward her subtly, a warm, chaste kiss finding her cheek before the other confides lowly, "I will say this once, Jacqueline Vargas, and I wish you to understand it fully."

The directive that follows is low, and while it is not unkind, that lilting timbre is nonetheless firm, "Look at me, rabbit."

She does, dark eyes feeling warm once more as warmer fingertips catch her by the chin as if to ensure she does not avert her gaze. Vivid scarlet and ocean-blue behind coppery lashes, the taller woman's gaze rests heavily upon her own, imperious. And then Moira asserts in a voice like waves thundering upon stone cliffs, low and direct, "Whatever poison has been allowed to take root here." 

A talon brushes lightly to her sternum, the sharp edge felt beneath the fabric of her hoodie, and Moira intones, "I wish you to be done with. It serves you _ill_ , and I am loathe to see its continuance. There is much about Angela that you do not understand, but suffice to say, I have no intention to return from whence I came."

"I am here because it is where I wish to be," those mismatched eyes search hers at that, and there's a pause as if to ensure that she truly comprehends it. "You are no second choice. There is no _enough_ that you must aspire to be with me, nor any other's shadow I would see you stand in. You are beautiful and flawed, chaos and perfection, and that is all that I require of you."

All sharp angles and freckles, those features draw nearer her own, tilt in until the taller woman's words murmur near her ear, "I watched you from the hallway for a full minute when you came down to my laboratory that first evening. If I knew what it would change to draw near, it is a choice I would commit to over without so much as a second's hesitation."

" _Tá mo chroí istigh ionat_ ," falls from Moira's lips, that husky voice warm, sincere in its confession before a light kiss finds the line of her jaw. _My heart is within you_. What the taller woman whispers next is no less gentle, a hushed, "Never doubt that." The second kiss to find her is feather-light, and that low lilt requests quietly, "Be careful with it, Jacqueline."

It feels as if something in her breaks at that. As if a pin were pulled, a tripwire snapped in the vicinity of her heart. The only conceivable result is destruction. Annihilation, as all the brittle fault lines in her are wrought to so much scattered ash and shrapnel. When the warmth in her eyes spills over once more, her tattooed arms wrap so tightly around lean shoulders that it elicits a soft sound from the back of Moira's throat. 

"I love you," is what Jack whispers as she turns her face into the side of Moira's neck. Her subtly calloused fingers wind into strands of red-gold hair as the other draws nearer, her knees resting on either side of that lanky frame as long arms pull around her in turn. "I-" 

Her words are cut off, nothing further forthcoming, but it doesn't matter. There's a low, reassuring murmur near her ear, encouraging her to let it out, and a comforting touch that runs up and down upon her back through a paint-spattered hoodie. So she lets it be. For the first time in so many years that she honestly can't remember the last, Jacqueline Vargas falls apart and trusts someone else to hold the pieces for her. 

She doesn't know how long they stay like that.

She doesn't care.

But there comes a point at which the scent of blackpowder that clings to her sweater seems to bleed into something else, something acrid that permeates through the fragrance of burnt amber and bergamot heady at Moira's collar, and when it does she draws in a shuddering breath and asks quietly against the side of the taller woman's neck, "Babe?"

"Mm?" comes the low response at that, and she feels a feather-light kiss find a place in her hair, throat constricting subtly at that. 

Lifting her head, though she is loathe to do so, and wiping a measure of moisture from her eyes with the heel of her hand, Jack clears her throat softly and asks in confusion, "Do you smell smoke?"

There's a thoughtfulness to Moira's expression, a subtle furrow to the brow as the other's hand comes to rest at her cheek, brushes a thumb over her cheekbone in a gentle gesture. As if it may answer the question, that lanky creature bends to hesitantly inhale a breath near the shoulder of her hoodie. It would not be the first time she smelled of smoke, to be certain, particularly after an ill-advised bit of techwork in Rialto or Junkertown. 

"I haven't been fucking around with anything," Jack confides softly, using the hem of one sleeve to wipe at her face once more and knowing that her dark eyes must be irreparably rimmed in red from crying. She hates that. She honestly can't remember the last time she did this in front of anyone. Hand slipping free of ginger hair, she curls her fingertips lightly at the back of the other's shoulders, in need of tactile contact still. 

A low, thoughtful hum sounds from Moira at that, and the scarlet and blue eyes find hers as the other confides, "I did smoke in the duration you were asleep, perhaps it-"

It isn't cigarette smoke, the familiar hint of menthol is lacking. Unless Moira has changed brands in the last week, which doesn't seem likely. Dark eyes roving over the kitchen briefly, Jack goes stock still at the sight of white-blue smoke coiling from between the thin seam at the top of the oven door. Her hand tightens on the other's shoulder reflexively, firmly enough that Moira emits a low sound from the back of her throat. 

"Babe, the stove," is all Jack has time to rattle out, pushing against the taller woman's shoulder to force Moira back a step and hopping down from the counter in the same motion, almost stumbling over the other's feet as she darts toward the pantry. 

A loud exclamation of, " _Shite_ ," echoes after her in a distinct and thickly Irish timbre. 

Jack doesn't know shit about how to cook, really. Her grand repertoire consists of beans on toast, scrambled eggs with a bit of crunch, and any assortment of tinned or prepackaged meals they could get ahold of in Junkertown. MREs sometimes, which her little brothers weren't fond of and her mother soldiered through with the persistence of an old member of the ALF. 

But she _has_ little brothers, and she cut her teeth in Junkertown. Both have left her with an intrinsic knowledge of _how to put out a fire_. She all but jumps up onto one of the lower shelves, having to climb up it like a ladder to snatch a box off the topmost one when she spots it, her boots hitting the floor a second later. 

When she hits the kitchen, several things happen in quick succession. 

#1: _Moira removes a tray of flaming...she doesn't even know....from the depths of the oven, smoke roiling from it all the while and an active flame still burning atop it_.

#2: _That licking flame catches the oven mitt holding one corner of the tray._

#3: _Jack all but sprints across the kitchen to fling an entire and decidedly sizeable box of baking soda onto the taller woman, dousing the flame and all but engulfing Moira in a cloud of white powder all in the same go._

When the dust starts to clear, the flames sputtered out atop the scorched tray, Moira stands in the centre of the kitchen like a snow-dusted statue, a fine layer of white powder clinging to the grey cashmere of the other's sweater and crisp, slate-coloured slacks alike. The collar of her hoodie drawn up over her nose and mouth to prevent inhaling smoke and baking powder alike, Jack casts a look toward the floor, where heaps of white dust are now scattered, then slowly up the taller woman to the powder-coated ginger of the other's hair. 

A strangled bit of laughter sounds in the back of her throat at the same instant a low, incredulous noise escapes Moira herself, those mismatched eyes blinking once with excruciating slowness before they seek out her own. They both start to laugh at the same time, the one compelled of a husky chuckle and the other a softer sound, swiftly followed by the Junker catching her compatriot by the sleeve and pulling the other over to the sink. 

The tray and its scorched contents land in the sink with a clatter, and Jack sprays them down with the small hose on the appliance to be safe, watching the steam kick up from them before catching Moira by the wrist instead and drawing the taller woman over nearer. Meticulously removing a slightly burnt oven mitt from Moira's hand and then rolling up the other's sleeve to the elbow, her fingertips gently seek out any burns that may have made their way through, finding only a small reddened mark on the heel of the hand that she runs under cold water. 

"Anywhere else?" she asks, pulling open a drawer near the sink and then another until she finds a small firstaid kit. An arch to her brow as Moira pulls away, she starts to set out the contents of the kit on the counter while the taller woman crosses toward the oven to check for damage, then opens the kitchen window to air out the room, allowing an all-too-bitter breeze into the house. 

There's a shake of a ginger-crowned head as the taller woman returns, a slim hip leaned to the counter as the other allows her to smear a scarce amount of medigel over the slight burn and check once more for further marks. In a low timbre, Moira confides, "I do not believe so. Thank you. It should heal of its own volition soon enough."

With a water-resistant temporary bandage sealed over the burn, Jack releases the other's wrist, a hand raking through her dark hair as she looks over the wreckage of the kitchen. Glancing up at the taller woman beside her, still dusted in white powder like the Ghost of Christmas Past, she emits a soft sound in the back of her throat and asks, "So. Takeaway?"

She licks her lips slowly, thoughtfully, trying to fight down the amusement in her voice as she ventures, "Japanese maybe?"

Jack can't help herself. It's a curse. She presses, "Barbeque?"

A hand finding Moira's side and applying a faint pressure, she bites her lip to prevent herself from laughing when the other looks down at her. There's a smudge of white across the bridge of a freckled nose which is decidedly difficult not to focus on. 

Clearing her throat softly, she asks with a vague amusement, "Too soon?"

It isn't something that she immediately notices when Moira reaches behind them and toward the faucet. Not until ice-cold water arcs through the fabric of her hoodie, raising gooseflesh over what seems the entirety of her body from the sheer temperature of it, and a sharp yelp escapes her. Shock painted over her features, Jack stares at the taller woman for an instant, gaze flicking from mismatched eyes to the fucking _sprayer hose_ in the other's hand. 

"You right shit," Jack utters at that, only to yelp again when the water's turned on once more. It only turns off when she has both hands wrapped around the taller woman's wrist and it's in more danger of spraying the ceiling than her. Water dripping from her hair and the sodden hem of her hoodie, the Junker accuses with a snort of laughter, "I'm fucking freezing and there's _water in my socks_."

The lean arm not currently held at bay by her grasp of the other's wrists slips around her waist instead, drawing her a touch nearer, and Jack snorts softly once more, dark eyes searching mismatched and noting the devilish glitter to them of a sudden. Without prompting, Moira observes with seeming conviction, "I had reason to believe there may be a secondary fire. A necessary precautionary measure."

"You're a _fuck_ ," Jack accuses with a shiver, laughter shaking her shoulders nonetheless. "And after I saved your lanky ass, too."

That powder-dusted countenance draws nearer, ducks sufficiently for the taller woman to murmur in her ear, "You deserved it." 

There's a sharp nip there, thereafter, and when Jack shivers again - a result of that very action and the chill breeze now permeating both the kitchen and her damp clothes - Moira's voice drops a little lower in her ear, a husky note carried in its timbre now, "I could assist in remedying the situation?"

Dark eyes snap up to mismatched at that, Jack's cadence dubious in turn as she asks, "You going to use the goddamn sprayer hose?"

A husky chuckle is her only answer. 

\--- 

Warmer by far when she finally steps out of the shower and wraps herself in one of the many, overlarge towels meant to fit a frame much taller than her own, Jack tracks water across the mosaic tile floor as she makes her way across the master bathroom, a corner of Moira's home that is easily six times the size of the bedrooms in her own flat. The air is fragrant with the scent of citrus and clove from the soap in her away bag, and silver-white mist stirs along the floor with each step, an indication enough of how long she's spent in here this evening. But with a seemingly endless supply of hot water and good company, she doubts anyone would blame her. 

It's been long enough that the resident Dubliner has already tended to showering, left to order their takeaway for the evening, and then come back to check on her intermittently. Twice, thus far. With seemingly vast amusement the second time at finding her still beneath the hot water the second time. It comes as little surprise that there is a third, but it still doesn't fail to make her jump when she hears a thoughtful hum in the vicinity of the door. 

Dark eyes darting toward the silhouette there, she finds those freckled features graced with their omnipresent smirk, a look that she is more familiar with than she is not. Impossibly tall, impeccably poised, all of these are descriptors of the lanky woman standing near the door, clad in a black tank top that reveals the musculature of those freckle-smattered shoulders and accents the other's lanky height no small amount. It's not entirely _fair_ by her reasoning that anyone should look that fit ready for bed, but the other does. That fucking _smirk_ isn't helping.

Pushing off the wall with a shoulder, Moira drifts to stand with her at the sink, a stack of neatly folded clothes set there for her. There's a pull to the corner of that smirk before the taller woman inquires, "Are you planning to take up permanent residence in the master bath, rabbit?"

With a soft snort amusement, Jack flicks a look from the folded clothes up, dark gaze meeting mismatched to read the wicked gleam of mirth there. Clicking her tongue lightly to the roof of her mouth, she retorts, "I'll jump my ass back in there. Don't try me."

Selecting another towel from the shelves, which necessitates little more than leaning with those long limbs, Moira tosses it over her head with little pretense and she _almost_ has time to protest before she realizes what the other is up to. It pulls back enough that she can see the mirror once more, the playful smirk toying at the corner of the others lips as the other woman starts to meticulously dry her hair with it. The ministrations are gentle, not unwelcome, and after a time, her eyes start to slip closed from it. There's a low sound of amusement at that.

When the other has finished, Moira merely drapes the towel around her shoulders and wraps slender arms around them thereafter, a kiss placed to her damp hair before mismatched eyes look toward the mirror.

"I had considered," there's a thoughtfulness to those lowly lilting words, as if the matter at hand had indeed been the subject of vast scrutiny. A pause follows, in which Jack's dark eyes slip back open, meet Moira's scarlet and blue in the mirror's silvery surface. Warm fingertips rest alongside her neck, brushing ever-so-slightly against coppery skin, and those mismatched eyes flick sidelong for only long enough for the other to place another kiss where they had before. "That it may be pleasant if you took up residence here."

"That so?" Jack answers with a current of amusement, leaning back comfortably against that lanky frame, into a warm embrace. Dark eyes set to the other's in the mirror, she teases lowly, "You think your water bill could handle it?"

A husky chuckle sounds in the vicinity of her ear. It shivers off the tiles, reverberates pleasantly over the glass. 

Sharp-angled and dusted in a smattering of freckles, Moira's countenance boasts no small measure of amusement as the other asserts lowly near her ear, as if it were some fashion of secret, "I would thank you to consider it. While our arrangement at current is _satisfactory_ , rabbit, there would be ample benefit to having you close."

"Yeah? Like what," Jack asks in turn, a murmur of laughter to the smooth cadence of her voice.

"We could see one another with more frequency," comes the low lilt of a response, more serious than she anticipated. It turns to a murmur against her ear, "At night." 

A soft hum is heard there thereafter, and her head tilts almost unconsciously toward it, dark eyes seeking out the other's gaze in truth, rather than in the reflection of the mirror. The kiss that finds the scar at the apex of her lip is light, never fails in making darker lashes flutter with the action. "In the morning."

"You're serious," Jack observes with a measure of surprise at that fact, a hint of pink rising to her cheekbones at that. Turning to face the taller woman fully, she rests her hands to the other's slim hips, thumbs stroking there lightly, little half-circles that edge just slightly beneath that dark shirt. She tilts her head subtly to the side, dark eyes searching the other's expression.

"Quite." It's a simple response. Succinct in the manner that Moira so often is when she _means it_ , and she isn't sure what to do with that. It must show in her expression, because a cool, lavender-tinted hand lifts to tuck a knuckle beneath her chin, a talon hovering over her cheek as the pad of the other's thumb brushes along the line of her jaw. "Our time constraints are - at times - taxing."

_Understatement of the century, O'Deorain._

"I believe we would benefit from a standardized routine. Cohabitation," Moira confirms in a timbre like whiskey and smoke, low and warm in the best ways. Leave it to fucking _Moira_ to find a way to make the word _cohabitation_ sound sexy. _Fuck_. "Think upon it, rabbit."

A chime sounds through the home shortly thereafter, likely signifying that their takeout has arrived.

Swift, so as to avoid repercussions for being a _right shit all the time_ , the taller woman leans in to steal a kiss from her, having the audacity to nip her upper lip before retreating. There's a sharp _tug_ on the retreat, and she realizes too little too late that the former was a ruse to preface the nicking of her towel. 

It's cooler without it, and gooseflesh breaks out over her skin from the lack of warmth almost immediately. Dark eyes meet mismatched, and the taller woman narrowly avoids the swat aimed at her. Even that does little to diminish that _fucking smirk_.

With a pointed glance over her as she turns to pick through the clothes on the sink, Moira drawls out amusedly, "And get dressed. Honestly, the state of you."

A balled-up shirt hits the wall beside the taller woman on the other's retreat, and the reverberations of a chuckle sound in the hall. Jack shakes her head, snorts softly in amusement, and moves to draw on a pair of black boy shorts, pulling the over-tall hoodie over her shoulders thereafter and forgoing the shirt in entirety.

_Cohabitation_.

And what would that be like? She's had roommates before, to be certain. Since she moved to Oasis. She had her little brothers in Junkertown. Both are different situations entirely. This would be different. Vastly. Strangely, given that three days ago, she wasn't sure they were coming back from the scuffle in the machine shop. 

She supposes that Australia could be considered a trial run. And God, she has a lot of thoughts about that. Chief among them that Australia was _good_. Not all of it. Not up on the red stone cliffs. Not beneath them in the tin trailers with her family. But the bunker near the coast, where it was just _them_. Just early mornings and late nights, the salt air and the summer sun, and that low lilt a murmur in her ear as was only a moment ago. 

There's one thing that she's certain of. If there is even a fraction of their time that would be like that, it would be worth taking a chance on. Every time.

\--- 

It's warm in the living room, lit by the amber glow of the fire burning in the hearth. When she moves around the couch, Jack can see the down comforter folded at the end of it closest to the fireplace, presumably for her, and her fingertips brush over the surface of it lightly as she looks about the room, deep in her own thoughts for a time. _If this is how it could be._ The thought lingers, stays with her when Moira comes into view down the hall, a brown parchment bag carefully carried so as not to spill the contents. 

_Even a fraction of the time._

She's never had anything like this before. And that, she believes is the root and the heart of it. Why Angela bothers her so much. Because this is different. This isn't how it was before. It's not on-again off-again so fast it makes her head spin and the chaos of it becomes normal. And maybe a part of her always knew there had to be more than that. She's just never _had it_.

Jacqueline Vargas does not know what to do with this. But she's starting to believe that _not knowing_ might just be alright.

Coppery hair still damp, it strands stricken with flickers of gold at the ends in the firelight, Moira is tall and lean between the fire and shadow. Always in between, never wholly of this world or the other. When those mismatched eyes, vividly scarlet and blue, meet hers and find her watching, there's a subtle tilt to the taller woman's head and Moira pauses in unpacking the cartons of takeaway that are being set out on the coffee table. 

The lowly lilting and faintly amused query that follows is a warm, "What are you doing, Jacqueline?"

_Standing here. Staring at you._ That would be the simplest answer, and the thought of saying just that curls the corner of her lips slightly in turn. In the time that they look at one another, however, the truth of the matter creeps up. It makes something fingertips warmer, makes her smile curve a little further, and when she shakes her head slowly in spite of herself, a soft sound of mirth escapes her and she replies with, "I love you."

Those mismatched eyes blink once at the response that's received, slowly, coppery lashes fluttering briefly as if it were unanticipated in its frankness. She doesn't say it often, she supposes. She should say it more, if the hint of pink dusting the arc of those sculpted cheekbones is any indication. 

A light, "Oh." is the response that she receives, and while imbued with brevity, it lives and breathes on in the pleased smile that curls the corner of the taller woman's lips, in the look that graces those eyes for the moment.

God. She really is a sucker for this soft shit.

Drawing around the table if only for a moment, Jack rests her fingertips lightly upon the other's arm, a stark juxtaposition of warm, coppery skin and cool lavender branching with metal. There isn't a flinch beneath her touch anymore. 

Thumb stroking a half-circle on the other's bicep, the Junker searches Moira's gaze a second further before asserting softly, "I'll move in."

" _Oh_ ," and there's a different inflection, a dawning realization to this one. It sounds, impossibly, more pleased. Perhaps a touch surprised that the inquiry was all it took. Perhaps more than a touch self-satisfied at that fact, even. There's a thoughtful hum from Moira, after which the other starts to speak and then abruptly stops, "When would you...hmm."

"Whenever we have the time," Jack answers with a slight shrug, then cranes up on her toes to place a kiss to the taller woman's cheek. With a soft sound of amusement as she settles flat on her feet once more, she observes, "You don't have to look so smug about it."

Because there's that smirk again. Back in full force as Moira looks down at her as if she were particularly worthy of fascination or extended study. As if perhaps the geneticist has just won some complicated and elaborate game that she wasn't even aware that they were playing. She's not sure she's going to _survive_ living here, if it remains. But she pinches the other lightly on the side in a teasing fashion nonetheless, makes her way over to the end of the couch. 

Sinking comfortably into the plush cushions and drawing the comforter over herself for additional warmth, Jack feels the couch dip slightly to her side as a tall frame settles beside her, over the blanket rather than under it. A lean shoulder comes to rest to hers once their takeaway containers have been appropriately distributed. 

"Are you quite warm enough?" Moira inquires lowly beside her, that timbre smooth and pleasant as the other uses chopsticks to pick through a container of grilled octopus. "I can add more wood to the fire if you would like, rabbit."

"Mm," Jack's answer is noncommittal at first, despite even her shoulders feeling warm between the proximity of the taller woman, the fire, and the borrowed sweater that still smells faintly of bergamot and burnt amber. She likes it. "This is good." There's a pause afterwards, and she snorts softly as she thinks of the bathroom, "You're still in trouble."

"You seemed in need of assistance," the other retorts lightly, though a sly smile lingers on those angular features well after, never quite relinquishes its hold. A few minutes of silence stretch between them thereafter, in which scarlet and blue eyes turn a touch contemplative once more, and eventually Moira admits, "I would care to discuss Angela with you at further length, if you are amenable."

_Amenable_. Leave it to Moira to use a word like _amenable_. 

Dark lashes fluttering momentarily at the abrupt shift in conversation, or perhaps the presumed _topic_ of that conversation, the Junker flicks a look up from the vidscreen to meet the other's gaze. It seems earnest enough, mismatched hues vivid in the firelight. And while she doesn't entirely know what to do with that question, Jack answers nonetheless, "Alright. Pass me the short ribs, yeah?"

The lean musculature in the other's shoulders shifts in the firelight as the taller woman leans forward to collect the appropriate carton, setting it in her hands along with a set of chopsticks for her own use. When that lanky frame settles back where it had been, Jack emits a soft sound of contentment in spite of herself, then nods, starting to push around the contents of the carton to find the piece she wants. It's savory. Spicy. A little sweet. Hands down the best Korean barbeque they've found in Oasis thus far, and they've been looking.

"May I ask what exactly she said to you?" the taller woman inquires then, throat clearing lowly as the other continues to poke through grilled octopus without actually seeming to consume any of it, perhaps simply for something to do with slender hands. 

Dark eyes honing in on it, Jack retorts with a dry mirth, "If you actually eat a piece of that instead of staring into it like it contains a lost mystery of the universe, maybe."

Another sidelong glance in her direction, and there's a distinct scoff at that before the corner of Moira's lips turns up faintly. Shaking her head slowly, the taller woman lifts a sole piece of octopus with pointed slowness, as if to demonstrate actual intention to eat it. 

Answering only after she's observed the other start to chew, Jack nestles in a bit further, her shoulders relaxing and a slow exhalation escaping her in thought, "Bunch of bullshit about ethics and fairness. _That woman's dangerous_. You know. The usual." Dark eyes narrowing faintly around the corners, she confides hesitantly, "That I don't know you better in six months than she did in eight years. I maybe didn't like that very much."

"Whenever she opens her mouth it makes me want to skin her," Jack murmurs, displeasure bleeding into her smooth cadence as she picks up another bit of short rib between the ends of her chopsticks. "Her breaking into my apartment with her boys and shooting me probably doesn't help, to be honest."

A low sound catches her attention at that, and there's a tightening at the corners of the other's eyes for an instant, in which Jack realizes that they never really discussed in great detail how that went down or who pulled the trigger. It was a non-lethal round, didn't leave a wound, per say, but it had bruised rather spectacularly. And it did get her to drop the knife she'd been holding.

"She acts like...I don't know, babe. Like you're this enigma that only she'll ever be able to understand entirely." She sets her carton of takeaway aside, and for a hard moment, Jack stares at the coffee table, her head tilting subtly. "Like she has this intimate knowledge of how you work, like someday I'll be fucking around with the wires and you'll just implode on me."

"Jacqueline. Rabbit," An unanticipated, yet faint sound of mirth sounds from Moira as if in spite of itself. "Have you just compared our current arrangement to _assembling ordnance_?"

A mischievous curl to the corner of her lips at that, almost in spite of herself, Jack asserts in response, "Maybe. The satisfying kind." Sneaking her fingertips just under the hem of the other's shirt, she pinches the other lightly on the side and drawls out a touch impishly, "You know. The sort that goes off with a bang."

" _Incorrigible_ ," a husky chuckle accompanies the words, Moira's expression both incredulous and a touch fond. There's a little jump to the other's side beneath her hand, and when she withdraws. 

There's a momentary lull in conversation at that before it picks back up. A comfortable silence in which they consume the remainder of their meal and then settle in for the evening. It finds her kicked back on the couch, her head propped against the plush arm of it, while Moira's lanky frame has come to rest sprawled over her much akin to the blanket she's drawn around them both. It's a pleasant weight, a freckled cheek nestled to her chest as her fingertips slip slowly through the other's coppery hair. 

"She wants you back, you know," Jack observes after a time, a warm note to her voice nonetheless as she trails the curve of the other's ear with a fingertip. "I can't say that I blame her."

That elicits a low, soft sound from the back of the other's throat. Vivid behind coppery lashes, scarlet and blue eyes watch the fire as Moira confides, "We were nothing if not needlessly complicated, Jacqueline. I suppose that is the nature of romance in a clandestine workplace."

As much as Jack dislikes the topic, she does find that she wants to know, "How...hmm. Eight years is a long time, babe."

"It is. If we are counting the time in which we did not dance around the topic, it was some closer to five," Moira drawls the words out slowly, timbre a touch languid, perhaps from warmth or drowsiness. Perhaps both. "Were you and the Queen not together far longer?"

She could almost laugh at that, honestly. If it wouldn't disturb the lanky creature nestled to her by the fire. Opts to make a soft, amused sound in her chest in lieu of it, and answers back softly, "I guess? We were...God. We were very on and off, babe. Fast enough it'd make your head spin. A lot of push and pull, you know? It had gotten some better before the Omnium."

Cradling the other's jaw, she strokes a thumb slowly along the sculpted contours of a freckled cheek, hears and feels a slow exhalation from Moira at that. With a contented sound of her own, Jack ventures honestly, "This is probably the longest I've been _with someone_ all in one go, you know."

There's a slow blink of scarlet and blue eyes at that, a flicker of surprise casting over sharp features before Moira makes a low, thoughtful sound and admits, "I had not anticipated that."

"I can tell," Jack answers simply. 

Moira is silent for a time before observing in a low, languid timbre, "What I told you about our falling out was perhaps an oversimplification of the matter."

"Mm," her response in turn is little else but a soft noise, the slow sliding of her fingertips back into coppery hair. There are many things that she likes about it. The way hints of gold touch the ends of it in the firelight. The low, pleased sound it never fails to elicit. The occasional craning into her touch. 

"Angela and I were engaged at the time," Moira confesses in that whiskey and smoke voice, pleasant to the ears in a way that the words themselves are not. When her fingertips fall suddenly, wholly still at that, she doubts it goes unnoticed. There's a slow turn that brings angular features nearer her hand, a gentle kiss placed to her palm as if that maybe soften the revelation. It does, somehow. When the taller woman settles back in, it's to confide, "It was not common knowledge. I do not honestly know that many outside our central social circle were even aware of the matter."

And God, it isn't that Jack doesn't _want_ to say something at that. But more so that she doesn't know _what_ to say. It's new territory, as if she were running her hands gently over old scars, feeling the seams where something cut in deep. She wants to be careful with it. Isn't sure how. Settles for stroking back through soft, coppery hair, scraping her nails lightly at the nape of the other's neck to elicit a quiet, pleased sound. 

"We were working on nanite research. It became the basis of her...ability to resurrect the fallen. But it is an imperfect science. It can draw one back from the brink, but it cannot heal intrinsic faults in the structure of a patient," Moira intones in a contemplative manner. 

"You have had ample opportunity to work with Gabriel at this juncture," Moira muses then, timbre a touch pensive in a way that reaches her expression. In the dim amber light of the fire, it paints the freckles cast upon that sharp countenance in hues of cinnamon and sepia, warm constellations that Jack traces with a dark gaze. "What do you think of him?"

It's an abrupt shift in topic, but one that she can roll with. Jack observes smoothly, if with thought, "Reyes is a bit of a bastard, but I like him. Fairly certain he's the one that left us breakfast while we were all hungover as fuck at HQ, which means he's basically an angel in my book."

Moira chuckles at that, the sound as genuine as it is warm; it reminds her of how good whiskey feels, and Jack draws her a little nearer at that.

"Gabriel is and was my closest friend," comes a low admission from the taller woman. Moira shifts subtly, up on elbows for a moment and then back, the other's chin resting to her sternum and scarlet and blue eyes alighting on her. As if the confession were significant in some way. Given the limited number of people she's seen Moira interact with on any meaningful level, it is. "He was an integral balancing point for Overwatch's Strike Commander at the time. Jack Morrison. You know him as Soldier 76."

There's something hard behind mismatched eyes at the statement. A subtle sharpness to them, a tension in the cheek that she tries to smooth away with light fingertips. 

"After a time, command requested that Gabriel form a covert taskforce - Blackwatch - to handle the business they wished not to dirty their hands with publicly. Necessary business, but that which they perceived Overwatch could not be seen to touch," Moira observes lowly, a slow exhalation escaping her as her freckled countenance grows pensive. "Genji Shimada. Jesse McCree. He made a motley family of them for a time. Gabriel always excelled at doing that.'

There's another slow exhalation, a subtle frown that can be seen mostly in the scarce furrow of a brow.

"I digress. While Angela and I had complimentary research, I had not strictly theorizedd on alternate applications. I was not the only to consider the weaponization of it," Moira admits in a low, smooth timbre, an odd look overtaking those freckled features in the dim light. They seem to harden subtly further, as if they could be hewn from stone. "Gabriel's condition changed many things for me. It put just as many into perspective, rabbit. He came to my lab one night for a second opinion. Terminal. They projected that he had six months, optimistically."

Jack thinks that if you could chip past the stone for just a moment, a second in which to view what rested beneath, it would showcase an old pain. One that lingers in the spaces in between and haunts the place behind those mismatched eyes even now, not as well-hidden as it believes itself to be. 

"My scans indicated that he would be lucky to reach four. It was in his bones. His lungs. Everywhere. If he hadn't previously undergone an enhancement program with the military, he would not have made it to my door," the taller woman observes slowly, scarlet and blue eyes lingering at the scar at the apex of her lip, as if it were a distraction, or perhaps uniquely fascinating. 

"Angela's research can draw the dead back from the very brink of non-existence, even once brain function has essentially ceased," it's said matter-of-factly in that low lilt, as if the other were intimately familiar with the mechanics of it. "But it cannot correct an intrinsic fault. Had Gabriel been resurrected, the fault would persist. He would still be dying. Slower, perhaps, but inevitably. I had all the information that I needed to theorize how the nanites could be modified to pursue a different avenue. Simultaneous destruction and creation."

A bitter humor marks the smile that touches those lips now, Moira's sculpted countenance cast with shadows as the fire flickers, "Would you believe, Jacqueline, that I asked for her assistance once. Angela believed my intent was to weaponize her research. She was not wholly incorrect, but..." Those scarlet and blue eyes are shrouded, half-hidden behind coppery lashes. "She accused me of attempting to play _God_. I informed her he did not exist, but that Gabriel _did_."

Almost unheard, yet with a note of derision, Moira confirms, "I maintain that she has a unrealistic perception of what was done to retain Genji Shimada."

Arms coming to drape around the other's lean shoulders, Jack presses a kiss to the side of the taller woman's ginger-crowned head, seeing the flicker of a smile touch those features before it fades. She listens. That is all she can do at this juncture. 

Moira turns toward her a scarce measure nonetheless, ducks to place a responding kiss to her sternum through the soft fabric of her hoodie, head coming to rest there shortly thereafter. With a lowly lilting timbre, the taller woman confides, "Blackwatch _needed_ Gabriel. And I needed him, selfishly. I could see how without him, all the delicate balances that kept our world in check may fall apart. I did not anticipate that we would become the very catalyst for doing so."

"Rapid cellular degeneration and regeneration," Moira muses lowly, breath warm when she exhales slowly into Jack's shirt, vividly mismatched eyes slowly slipping closed. "We argued often, and viciously. When she could not convince me to halt my research, she had it blacklisted by command. I continued it in secret. Gabriel did his best to cover my tracks, as it were."

"In retrospect. It was over well before the miscalculation with my arm," the taller woman confesses, and those scarlet and blue eyes slip back open, the limb in question held up slightly, it's taloned fingers flexed. Lavender in hue, with duskier hints of blue near the knuckles and the nailbeds, at the crook of the elbow, it is a stark juxtaposition to the otherwise freckled white of the other's complexion.

It's never bothered her, save when she thought it may hurt. A source of fascination, Jack thinks, sliding the tips of her subtly-calloused fingers up from the elbow along the branching web-work of metal and towards the wrist. Further, to lace slender fingers through Moira's own, and draw that lavender-tinged hand down so that she can brush a kiss to its knuckles. She doesn't let go, pulling their hands to rest near her collarbone, still laced together. 

It takes her a moment to place that Moira has flinched at that. Not so much at the action itself, but something in process of pulling the other's hand toward her, and with a shake of her head, Moira slowly disentangles their fingers, arm coming to rest back at the other's side as that low lilt confides, "The joint is a touch stiff."

With a faint displeasure, which seems more to do with having to withdraw the touch than not, Moira continues with her explanation, "But there was a finality to the event with my arm. We could not survive an abject lack of trust. She turned me in through every avenue available to her, then had the gall to weep in my office while I boxed up what remained of my research that was not ordered _destroyed_. A lifetime's work."

"It meant many things. The end of my life with Overwatch and with Angela, and the start of other ventures. The arrangement that I made with command was...abysmal, to honest. It was to be termination, but Captain Amari saw me quietly transferred into Blackwatch. I was less quietly discredited in public forum," the other woman observes lowly, mismatched eyes thoughtful. "I nearly lost Gabriel in the process."

The hint of a smirk that touches the corner of Moira's lips is unanticipated, matched with a subtle, devilish gleam to those mismatched eyes when the other woman looks up at her. 

"Thankfully," Moira drawls out at that, timbre all whiskey and smoke in the best way, carrying a current of amusement. "They did not become aware of what had transpired with Gabriel until well after. He was an incorporeal mist at the time. I believe he survived by...how did he put it."

There's a low, thoughtful hum at that, " _Possessing_ one of the lab rabbits until I could convince young Shimada to retrieve him. Ask him about it sometime. I am certain he will be _delighted_."

"He _what_ now?" Jack can't help but to snort softly at that, a whole host of minor occurrences of a sudden starting to make a cohesive, horrifying sort of sense. She blinks once. Then twice. Not waiting for Moira to respond, the Junker lets her head fall back to the arm of the chair and asks suddenly, "Is that why _fucking Liv_ keeps leaving carrots for him in the fridge at HQ?" 

"Last spring, Jacqueline," comes Moira's response, a low chuckle running through it as the other nestles a bit closer, the fire starting to wane. "She went out and _picked him_ a charming arrangement of crimson clover in time for Easter service."

She has no idea what to do with that. 

"He was duly flattered, I assure you."


	35. lost myself trapped inside the devil's den

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ** Drama  
> ** Dingos  
> ** Reyes said 'Let's go lesbians'  
> ** Grand Theft Auto  
> ** Poker??? Criminal levels of Smugness
> 
> Next chapters will be shorter, going to aim for weekly shorter chapters instead of dropping another monstrosity  
> This one got away from me a little :)

It feels like a lightning strike. A bolt from the blue, as if hurtled by a fictive god with the knowledge that its ghastly light would find her. It drives the air up and out of her lungs in a shuddering sound, forces her upright from a dead sleep, curled over the lavender-tinted arm cradled to her chest as if it would somehow dim the sensations that have taken root within it. The agony of it is sudden. Sharper still than the scalpels in their neat rows in her laboratory, and feels as though it cuts much deeper, bisects the flesh to root around in the cartilage and bone. 

It courses through nerves that are all but dead, that should not have _half_ the sensation they are attempting to contend with now. A bitter, persistent, _biting_ pain that branches from the shoulder-blade to the wrist and forces an involuntary curl in her taloned hand, a flickering of the black-purple energy that it can command. Breaking out in a cold sweat despite the warmth beside her, an acrid taste on the back of her teeth and poison in her blood, Moira O'Deorain would thank a god for small mercies if she believed in them, because _that hand_ was not on Jacqueline. It has caused no lasting harm.

 _Jacqueline_ , whose response to the sudden commotion was to scramble back in the dim light until tattooed shoulders hit the headboard and tattooed knuckles are taut, the slim Junker looking for all the world prepared to brawl with a fictional intruder in her bedroom in the middle of the night with zero provocation.

If another spasm of stabbing pain was not coursing through her arm right now, Moira may even find the wherewithal to chuckle at the reaction, but instead wonders why this is happening _now_. This bitter ache that consumes the whole of the limb. The last she felt it so strongly, and oh, she is intimately familiar with it, was in her laboratory in Gibraltar. Shortly before she lost most of the functionality of the limb altogether. It has been at worst a minor inconvenience of late, but not since then has it returned with such vengeance.

Scarlet and blue eyes a touch glassy, Moira draws in another slow and shuddering breath, allows coppery lashes to flutter closed as she tilts her head back to rest the base of her skull to the headboard. 

It starts to ebb; she feels subtly calloused hands take her head into their palms, the gesture warm and gentle. 

"Hey," the Junker's accent is impossibly thick this soon after waking, thrums in every word and breathes red earth and rust into the spaces in between. When her eyes slip back open, darker ones are watching her. They look almost black in what little silvery light ekes around the curtains, and in it, she can see a veil of dark lashes, a glorious mess of crow-black hair mussed from the pillows. 

"Hey. You right?" that voice draws her attention to the hint of a scar at the bow of the other's upper lip, something to focus on for the moment while the burning nerves start to dull, aches retreat until all that is left is the memory of it as fresh in her mind as the first time it occurred. She will have to run a battery of tests in the lab next she is in. 

But for now, Moira O'Deorain has other matters that must be dealt with. Namely, the back of a slender hand which has found her clammy brow, the other which rests at the column of her neck, its subtly calloused thumb brushing along the sharp line of her jaw. Jacqueline is _concerned_ , a beautiful mess in little else but an over-tall, borrowed sweater. 

And Moira? Well. It is not too late to assert control over the situation. To rein in what could swiftly be made too much of. She flexes her long fingers subtly, feels only the fading echo of an ache in them, and relaxes her arm at her side. _She still has control_. It would be easy to panic. To see all the variables that could go wrong. But her science is sound. The tests will be conclusive, and the last round, not so long ago, did not show anything anomalous.

It is well-intentioned that she lies to the woman sharing her bed. 

" _Níl aon rud ann_ ," even her own voice sounds low, a bit rough from sleep, when she hears it. It sands down the edges of words in her native tongue, makes them roll together perhaps a touch more than they should. "Only a troublesome dream, nothing more."  
** Nothing is the matter

When she shifts forward, a long arm snaking around the Junker's waist, and turns her features into the other's hair, she finds that it carries a fragrance like orange and clove, perhaps a hint of machine oil and leather. It is a scent that lingered in her sheets for a week after Jacqueline was taken to the warehouse on the edge of Oasis. It is pleasant now to have it back.

Slender fingers stroke through her hair then, a gentle attention that the Junker seems to take to whenever the opportunity presents itself. Not that Moira would complain of the action, instead, rather predictably relaxing into the touch. Allowing herself to be draw back to bed, settle in, she nestles her cheek to the other's chest as fingertips trail lightly through her coppery hair, trace the outline of her ear, occasionally brush gently to the back of her neck.

It's peculiar, how easily they have settled into this. How soothing the slow rise and fall of Jacqueline's chest is beneath her on each breath, and as her scarlet and blue eyes fall half-lid, a certain tension starts to leave her lanky frame. A smooth voice murmurs, smoky yet from it's sudden waking, "I got you."

 _You do._ It is a fact, the one at the forefront of her mind as she breathes in, exhales in a slow, smooth breath of her own, and feels the the other fingertips drift between her shoulders, tracing a light, idle pattern there instead. _In the palm of your hand. Though you hardly know that, do you?_

Six months past, Moira O'Deorain would not have known to miss this. There would have been no one _to miss_. No one to pick up from Rialto, or spend sunlit afternoons with on the Australian coast, or to linger on the periphery of her existence, never far, but not always _here_. 

There would be only her commute to the laboratory or to Talon Headquarters, and if she did not spend a long, sleepless night in one locale or the other, she would return home.

Even in that instance, Moira would consider her Oasis home to be in an austere state, spartan in aesthetic, less lived in than a space occasionally occupied. Until recently, she would not have considered that it was _empty_. It is a concept that she is becoming familiar with in the week that Jacqueline is suspended from the university. She is coming to know what it would be like, were it not empty.

What it looks like when it is not, a hoodie tossed over the back of the couch, a set of scuffed combat boots beside the door, the odds and ends of a military pack secured in their own space on a closet shelf rather than tossed for the evening near the foot of her bed. Things that under different circumstances, perhaps even if broken down to their barest parts, would seem insignificant but are in fact anything but. At the end of the week, the move will be permanent, the remainder of Jacqueline's belongings finding a place here. 

Not long ago, Moira would have considered this to be a foolish endeavor. Ventured that it would be far safer for both of them to continue to occupy the spaces in between, that their time is too scarce, their lives too chaotic to keep _what this is_ without finding a way to poison it. And what a near thing, of recent, between the meddling on the periphery and their own altercation in the machine shop. What she found at the root of it was not expected. What it caused her to consider was less so. She had not been concerned she may _lose this_ , until she believed Jacqueline meant to. 

She has not found the Junker less fascinating over time, but more unexpected. Complex in ways that were not anticipated. And one does not idly discern all the things that make another person _tick_ without burning one's fingers once or twice. There are referrals, inquiries that she will have to make. But there are adjustments that can be made now, little things, chess pieces moved to make the board a little more clear. That will make it a touch easier for the Junker to breathe in the meantime.

It is a curious predicament, her innate desire to keep this. Perhaps something that she should have seen coming far sooner and with far more certainty.

After all, _it is written in all the things that she began to miss_.

The fragrance of sweet orange and clove that clings to her sheets, to the pillows, on warm, coppery skin when she brushes a kiss to the juncture of the other's shoulder and throat, letting the caress linger. The way that gently trailing touch, light fingertips that draw up her shoulders, graze over the back of her neck in a slow, soothing fashion suddenly stills when another follows. The instant that touch seems more tangible, curls against her skin in the dim light when she leans up to kiss the other woman slowly, tenderly in the night. 

How those night-dark eyes watch her in the dim light when they part, only just, and search her gaze from behind sooty lashes.

Six months ago, Moira O'Deorain would not have known to miss this.

There would have been nothing to miss. 

\--- 

She awakens slowly before the sun fully rises, her coppery hair mussed and a pleasant warmth to the slim frame pressed against her side, weighting her arm down into the mattress. In the pale, grey illumination that makes its way through the blinds, Moira can pick out the hints of ink that trace over coppery skin, the apex of a tattoo that crests above the duvet, another at the curve of a bare shoulder. Her own handiwork is prevalent upon that burnished complexion, dapples the column of the throat in dusky hues of stone fruit, purple-reds permeated in an occasional crescent of darker colour where lingering kisses became soft bites somewhere in the night.

Her gaze lingers there, vivid in scarlet and blue as she traces a semi-circle of bruised skin with her fingertips. She bends her head to place a feather-light kiss there, relishes the soft sound the act elicits from the Junker, how Jacqueline stirs slightly but not away - into her, curling closer as if it were the natural state in which they should be. It's pleasant. Strange to contemplate, in a lifetime of people that _shrink_ from her, that see only so much blood on her hands, that there would yet be one who would desire to be _closer_ , even after seeing all that the other has seen.

She decides against reason, if only in as much as the morning. Whiles away the dawn in the comfort of her bed, warm fingertips tracing all the marks that she left on coppery skin the night before with the gentlest touch, so as not to wake the Junker. Her Junker. Once, Moira muses, simply allowing her arm to slip around that slim frame and lightly stroking the dip of the other woman's spine, she would have worn her own marks. Before the nanites and biotics.

She remembers having to wear her high-collared labcoat in Gibraltar after evenings out with Angela, the scent of floral perfume when the other doctor would skirt around her desk, lean over her shoulder to request her signature on forms that could wait, just for her company. To make a coy look with those perfectly blue eyes, full of the promise that soon enough, the long hours will while down and find them at one or the other's place once more. 

Making all the poor decisions that led them to ruin. 

_I'm no angel,_ Jacqueline had said to her not that long past, sitting in her living room. 

_I know,_ is what she answered.

 _Good,_ is what she thinks now. _You have no wings to tatter. Perhaps this will not kill us when it falls._

 _Run, rabbit. Run,_ is perhaps what she should say. But it is of little consequence. She does not wish Jacqueline to run, and it a reasonable conclusion at this juncture that the other would run _back_ , which is as troubling at times as it is comforting. 

When Moira does move, before her thoughts can turn further maudlin, it is with a certain care not to wake the Junker in her arms. The necessity of removing the one _beneath_ Jacqueline renders that inevitable in some regards, even with careful maneuvering.

At the sight of dark eyes slipping open - if only slightly - if only in so much as to search for where she has gone, Moira watches the other's countenance ease at seeing her still near. She leans over the bed to place a kiss at the other woman's temple, watches those eyes slip back closed, and murmurs low, "It is early yet, _a rúnsearc_. Back to sleep."

The sole sound of mirth that escapes the other is soft, drowsy still, but there no protest is forthcoming when she shores up the blankets around bare shoulders and smooths them there carefully. When she moves toward the door, her foot catches in a pool of soft fabric, the discarded hoodie caught up to carry to the laundry on her way to the shower. 

Preparation for the day. Routine, even if that routine is started much later in the morning than it normally would be. It is an acceptable sacrifice. And yet, it is not something that she notices immediately. Not fetching a towel from the rack or turning on the water. Not until she steps into the hot spray and a hiss escapes between her teeth, the sliding door yanked back open so that she can exit. 

Without bothering to turn off the water, the geneticist simply stalks out, pads over toward the mirror to turn her back to it, a host of damp footprints left in her wake. _There_. Beneath the water beaded across her lean, freckled shoulders and down along the spine. _There_ , perhaps not as red as they would be otherwise, but still _there_ in a way that they should not be. Subtly pink and _present_ in the morning, the telltale scrapes that denote where another's nails bit into her back in the night. 

Her countenance imperious now, wholly focused and stony, Moira leans a bit nearer the mirror on turning back frontward facing, leans closer to inspect the muted yellow-green of a not-quite-faded bruise at the juncture of her shoulder and neck, brushes her fingertips to it in inspection.

It should _not_ be present.

Scarlet and blue eyes narrow faintly in thought, as she attempts to calculate any alternative meaning. 

This won't do. No, this won't do _at all_.

\--- 

Where she is, settled on the back step in the crisp blue of the autumn morning, the pale golden sun dappling down over her freckled skin and the ceramic tile of the walkway below, Moira takes another drag from the cigarette between her pointer and middle finger. When she exhales, a whorling nimbus of white-blue-smoke colours the air like one's breath on a much colder morn, dissipates well before it finds the verdant foliage of the garden beyond. It is well-maintained, a pleasant location for thought, especially on mornings such as this - when the brisk bite of an artificial autumn on the brink of winter leaves her with the semblance of Dublin in the fall. 

Flicking a bit of ash into a nearby ceramic, the motion practiced and elegant, Moira watches with a certain vague amusement as Barra creeps slowly through the garden, nails clicking on the glazed tile of the walkway as he inspects everything in due time, from the ornamental waterways to the sweetgrass and palms, occasionally pausing to lap up a bit of water from the edge of a pool or nibble on the verdant green foliage. 

It's been years since she has had a dog about, even if he barely qualifies as one. Wild dog, technically, she reminds herself. Far too much intellect and cunning instinct housed within his skull for his benefit, or theirs. She would have much preferred a Doberman to a dingo, but cannot argue that it is...in some ways pleasant to have any canine around once more. Something that she missed far more than she alluded to, in any case. Bram and Bran had been nothing but _good dogs_.

Barra is a little chancer.

He has, in the period of the week that Jacqueline has been spending at her home, spent much of the time getting into trouble - which she supposes puppies are wont to do anyways. He is not, however, thoroughly convinced as of yet that Moira herself is worthy of listening to, which would not be as problematic if he listened more to _anyone_. She cannot blame much. Jacqueline was forthright about not having owned a dog before. There is a distinct part of her, however, that wishes that the other's first canine was not a bloody _dingo_ plucked out of the Australian Outback. 

He's been vaccinated, at the very least. Is in peak health, in fact, according to the veterinarian that they found in Oasis. And she would, lamentably, be absolutely lying through her teeth to claim that she had not found a measure of enjoyment in the few outings they have made to the park or the store to purchase this or that as necessary for the little beast. It is all very peaceful in a way they are very rarely afforded, as she is all to easily reminded of by a phantom twinge in her arm. 

She was even successful in talking the Junker out what she could only describe as a _Junkyard dog_ collar, complete with all manner of unnecessary rivets, for an option in hand-tooled leather with brass accents, which she purported was less threatening when one is already walking a wild animal around the city. It is all, she surmises, rather domestic in a way that she does not find disagreeable. 

This morning marks the first in a week that Moira has gone to fetch him from his kennel and he has _not_ made an attempt upon her slippers, which she supposes is a manner of progress in itself. Now if only, she muses, mismatched eyes settling on the creature as he starts to dig at a patch of loose earth, she could dissuade the persistent corner of her mind that keeps whispering that it would not be much more trouble to have _two_ pups in the house than it is one. 

Thankfully, the comm picks up to save her from that bit of introspection. At the grumbling on the other end, she chuckles lowly, and intones simply, "Gabriel," before taking another drag from her cigarette. The scent of menthol and smoke mingles with that of the cool garden, faintly floral, a bit green, and more than a little of earth. 

"What fucking time is it?" His voice is raspy, rough as if he had just stirred awake. He likely has.

"Early," Moira drawls out in a smooth lilt in return, flexing her hand tentatively to dispel the lingering feeling near the wrist and then leaning back a bit where she sits, stretching out her long legs as her shoulders find one of the upper stairs. She should put a chair out here, she muses, beneath the date palms where there is a better view of the pool.

As the dingo continues to scratch at a loose rock near the walkway's edge, she raises her voice enough to carry, timbre firm, "Barra. No."

His head shoots up, tawny ears almost comically large now that they are upright. The left flops over after a moment, and he tilts his head when she whistles sharply, whiskey-brown eyes curious. He does not dig at the rock again, instead ambling over to flop down near her feet, a tentative tooth set to her slippers before she states firmly once more, "No."

That earns her a soft, oddly-pitched noise from the creature, who rests his chin upon the ground and thumps his tail lightly.

Gabriel yawns slowly on the line, the soft popping of joints and vertebrae heard through the comm as he stretches with excruciating exactness, followed by the soft creak of bedsprings. He most certainly just got out of bed. 

Before too long, she hear a refrigerator door open and he asks in a raspy timbre, "I take it it went well?"

"Mm," is what she answers initially, little more than a thoughtful sound as she collects her thoughts. "It is perhaps complicated, but no - it did not go poorly. She will be moving in at the end of the week so that we can better capitalize on the time our schedules afford."

"Think you'll be less of a pill when you're getting laid on the regular?" Gabriel asks with a low snort, sounding amused with himself. He's uncapping something. Probably orange juice. If she were betting, to drink it straight from the bottle.

" _That_ ," the scientist retorts with dry mirth, taking another draw from her cigarette and exhaling a coil of smoke, "Is not a department that I struggle with, Gabriel. If this is transference, I could offer some advice."

With a faint smirk, her scarlet-and-blue eyes falling onto the dingo as it looks about to nibble at her slipper again, halting him in his tracks, she observes in a low lilt, "Or I could prescribe something."

"Uh huh," comes his response, a raspy chuckle sounding from him as if her response hadn't phased him in the slightest. "Last time you prescribed me something, it turned me into a _ghost_."

"There is a saying about beggars and choosers," Moira answers matter-of-factly, the words chased by a smooth chuckle. "You are not an _actual_ ghost, Gabriel. One would think that would be an improvement."

Leaning precariously to one side, Moira selects a tennis ball from the wooden bin near the stairs, bouncing it once off the timber to catch the dingo's attention and then again once she has it. A perfect brow arches, a smirk touching the corner of her lips as the creature's whiskey-brown eyes dart up, follow the orb in her hand, his ears flicking forward and then back, then forward once more. He doesn't bark, instead makes that odd whining sound once more, the end trailing off in a soft 'woosh' sound as if he were incapable of the action. 

"Cute. Glad your sense of humor's back," he observes in a raspy timbre, a prolonged silence following, after which a contented 'ah' is heard.

"Lacroix will have your hide if she catches you drinking it out of the carton," Moira drawls out, scarlet and blue eyes squinting faintly as the sun catches her eyes. Shifting out of the sunbeam as best she can, she throws the ball out into the back garden, the sound of paws scrabbling on tile heard as Barra takes off after it. 

"Amélie c-" he starts to retort, then pauses suddenly, the clearing of someone _else's_ throat and then a deathly silence heard on the other end before Gabriel asserts, "Hey. Yeah. Yeah, I'll get you more orange juice. Yeah, I'm going." The sound of him heading back to his quarters, the door clicking shut, follows, and then in a far more hushed voice, "She doesn't even drink the goddamn-"

"Olivia does," Moira points out lightly, chuckling once more in spite of herself. "You really should know better by now."

" _Olivia_ ," Gabriel protests, and she can hear the rustling of fabric as he starts to pull on clothes. Which means he was probably at the fridge in his boxers when Widowmaker caught him. Delightful. "Is still asleep. I wish _I_ was still asleep, but my second-favorite doctor decided to call at the _break of fucking dawn_."

"Second-favorite? Pray tell who is the first?" she observes slowly, stretching languidly before eyeing the carton and lighter on the rail. It really is far too early for a second cigarette, much as she would like one.

"Augustin," he answers, and she blinks slowly at that, sunlight glinting off coppery lashes and catching the vivid scarlet and blue of her eyes.

"Augustin does not have a medical license," Moira answers with a slight scoff, though the corner of her lips curls nonetheless. _Bastard_. She snaps her fingers lightly when Barra flops down nearby, in the dead centre of an artfully arrayed section of rose fountain grass, flattening the middle of it spectacularly and starting to rip the fluff off the outside of the tennis ball. "He is a glorified field medic."

"Yeah, but he makes a mean Blue Hawaiian," comes the other's return, the door creaking back open as Gabriel presumably makes his way back out of his room and toward the entrance of the building, out onto the streets of Rialto. Comm still in his ear, she can hear merchants hawking their wares from the nearby stands, the hustle and bustle of the canals. "Or did."

That elicits a snort of amusement from her, Moira's freckled nose nonetheless wrinkling subtly when she reaches down to collect the thoroughly-mouthed tennis ball that has been dropped at her feet. It's damp. Throwing it back out into the garden and watching Barra tear off after it, she wips her long fingers on the leg of her pajama trousers, reminding herself to add some cloths to the bin for that purpose next she's out here.

"You're a chancer," she observes amusedly. 

"Maybe you need to learn to make Blue Hawaiians is all I'm saying," Gabriel remarks with a raspy sound of mirth. "Which shop is the one with those croissants she likes? It's not Altieri's, is it?"

"Bamonte's," Moira confides after a moment, head subtly atilt as she ponders the query. She doesn't have to ask to know he means Lacroix. He absolutely got caught. "The _pain a chocolat_."

"You can just say chocolate croissant, you know," Gabriel teases on the other end of the line, voice a little gruff, though he sounds in good spirits yet. 

"I could, but where would be the fun, Gabriel?" she observes in turn. 

Ginger hair catching the sun, Moira stretches slowly, contemplating whether or not to return inside and opting not to when a tennis ball is dropped at her feet once more, the dingo who delivered it looking up at her expectantly. 

"Good lad." She clarifies immediately afterwards for Gabriel's benefit, "Not you, incidentally. Though it sounds you are feeling magnanimous today."

" _Barrel_ ," he snorts in response. 

"Hush."

"Yeah, well," the sound of a bell jingling overhead makes it likely that he has arrived at the bakery in question. It isn't far from headquarters, so that's not all too surprising. "Lacroix catches you in the kitchen drinking Liv's OJ, you make sacrifices. I'm not getting _shot_ again. You know how she gets."

She remembers, can't help but to smirk at the mention. Ruffling Barra's ears, Moira reaches down for the tennis ball and throws it out back once more, "It was a non-lethal round during a training exercise and there was no _lasting_ damage. You are being melodramatic."

"Take a non-lethal round about _two inches_ from your dick and then tell me that," Gabriel counters in a raspy timbre, his voice lowered in such a way that she's fairly certain he's in line now. "Never again." 

There's a pause, and she can tell he's not speaking to her any longer, "Bottle of orange juice, three chocolate croissants and..." 

A husky laugh escapes her at that, resonates in the early morning sun. Leaning back a measure with a devilish glint in her eyes that carries to her voice, Moira drawls out, "Olivia enjoys the _cartocci_ , if you truly wish to make amends."

"Two of the cartocci," Gabriel advises someone behind the counter, the muted conversation that follows permeated with the query of _Americano?_ which means they've hired on someone new in the mornings. While parchment paper rustles, she can imagine the ambiance of the local bakery they frequent, the air fragrant with almond and sugar, golden pastry, an earthy hit of expresso, it's façade all white marble and verdigris copper on the canal-side. 

A soft thumping on the stair beside her breaks her out of the daydream, whiskey-brown eyes set on her as Barra wags steadily, the tennis ball still in his mouth. Moira extricates it with care to avoid the teeth, cocking back her arm to throw it out into the bushes once more. A tawny blur of fur disappears after it soon enough, rustling leaves and branches heard as Barra roots around for it in the foliage.

With a tilt of her head as her heterochromatic eyes follow the action, Moira minces no words as she advises on the comm, "I need a favour, Gabriel."

There's a distinct pause then, as if he knows from her manner of speech alone the seriousness of the situation. The jingling of a bell sounds soon after, and she can hear the muted rush of conversation as he steps back out onto the street. The sounds of a Rialto morning.

"Shimada. I trust you still have contact with him?" the words taste a little bitter, fall from her lips like stones into a current of dark water, heavy with a meaning she will not divulge. "He owes me a favour that I, lamentably, need to collect on before the week is through."

At least it isn't Jesse. He took the fall of Blackwatch particularly _hard_ , in part, she believes, because of his close ties with Gabriel. Neither of them had walked out of that unscathed. She has always, however, had good rapport with young Shimada, despite his current affiliations having them at the opposite ends of a spectrum. Still, once a year on Christmas, she still receives a carefully hand-inked card from the monastery in Nepal, and he receives a wrapped parcel from an anonymous postbox in Dublin.

Traditional mail would take too long in this instance, and would hardly be appropriate. Overwatch may not withhold a scarf or a stack of comic books, but they would take decided exception to her current request, in the event they are monitoring the communications between them.

Confusion colours Gabriel's voice nonetheless, a touch of incredulity, "You want me to get you in touch with _Genji_?"

"Is that such an unorthodox request?" Moira inquires lowly, blowing a strand of red-gold hair out of her face when the breeze picks up a scarce measure. "It is not as if I requested you put me in contact with Jesse, after all."

He snorts at that. Loudly. "Jesse would rather eat his hat than talk to you, and you damned well know it. Probably the goddamn belt buckle, too."

There's another brief pause, and he sighs, a sound he never fails to make a little rough around the edges somehow, "You going to tell me what this is about?"

"I am not," comes her answer in turn, succinct but not unkind. The long stretch of silence that follows, permeated only by the sounds of his walk back to headquarters, is indication enough of his displeasure.

She does not say anything either.

He breaks the silence after a time, voice more than a little gruff as he observes, rightly, "There's a reason you didn't just ask Liv to connect you."

"Correct," Moira answers with brevity.

"You're really not going t-"

"Gabriel," there's a sharper note to how she says his name this time. 

"Hell," is all Gabriel responds with, another raspy-edged sigh in its wake. There's a pause as he shoulders open a door, and then a low affirmation of, "Look. I'll give him a ring this afternoon. I can't promise anything."

"I understand. Thank you," she responds simply, a slow exhalation following as a touch of relief settles in. Shimada is her best chance at recovery of any paper documentation from Overwatch, although convincing him will be a complicated factor indeed. "And the other matter?"

"Talked to Akande about it already. He didn't make too much fuss about it. Don't think he realized how much he was piling on, because it was getting done," Gabriel answers back. "She'll have five days in Rialto, training in the morning and your shit in the afternoon. Two off days, no Junkertown unless there's an _actual emergency_ that our reps can't handle."

He snorts suddenly, a note of humor to his voice as he confides, "He's sending Amélie."

She blinks slowly at that, scarlet and blue eyes a touch incredulous as she observes slowly, "He's sending _Lacroix_ to Junkertown?"

"Told him he needed someone with brass balls to put up with the Junker Queen on the regular. You don't really get more brass than Amélie, now do you?" Gabriel observes with another snort, a raspy chuckle chasing after it. "Trial basis. It'll be an experience. Liv's excited about it. She's already eyeing hoverbikes."

"A crass assertion, but not wholly...incorrect in sentiment," Moira observes lightly, a brow arching at the thought of Lacroix in Junkertown. "Though perhaps Akande should be the one concerned about stray bullets at that rate. I assume she will be back in Rialto for her physical on the month?"

"Yeah, he's sending you the dates," Gabriel asserts as he heads down the hall, a few _hellos_ heard on the way. When the door finally clicks shut, she hears him toss the bag onto a table and announce, "Got you breakfast."

There's a brief scraping sound as he drops into a chair and it shifts upon the floor, followed by a cool, polite, " _Merci_ ," from Lacroix and the sound of hands rummaging around in a paper bag, presumably Olivia.

"Doc's moving her Junker in," Gabriel observes conversationally, presumably to the both of them, though soon remarks to Moira in turn, "You hear they stole a goddamn gondola when she was out last?"

"Gabriel.." she has the wherewithal to start to warn him, before she hears a commotion erupt on the other end. 

"Liv. Liv it's in my goddamn ea-" there's a crackling sound on Gabriel's end of the line, followed by a much quieter an more distant sounding exclamation of, "Fuck."

And then Olivia is on the line, speaking through bites of pastry as she all but impishly demands, "Tell me everything."

"And why, pray tell, should I do that?" Moira retorts with a low, mirthful sound of her own. 

"Qué triste. You know how much that hurts me, _bruja_ ," Olivia replies between a crunch of golden, buttery pastry and coarse sugar. She doesn't have to imagine the little hand gestures she's certain the hacker is making right now to accompany the words. "Besides, I have my sources. This isn't amateur hour."

"By which you mean you'll simply ask Jacqueline," comes with a smooth chuckle, Moira stretching her arms above her head and feeling every bit of the stiff joint as she contemplates heading back inside to make a cup of coffee. 

"What can I say? Once you steal a gondola together, it builds a certain bond," Olivia remarks cheekily on the other end of the line, a quiet intonation of _Boop_ heard, which likely means that she's pestering Lacroix at the same time. Lacroix has a seemingly infinite patience for it. "When is she moving? Does she want help?"

"I suspect," Moira pauses at the sound of the sliding glass door hissing open, footsteps heard on the porch as a slim form makes its way outside and settles on the stair just behind her, knees to either side of her. "That movers shall suffice. Though you may ask if you like."

A mug is held out to her with tattooed fingers, and when she takes it, the Junker that has settled behind her simply drapes slender arms comfortably around her and nuzzles drowsily into the side of her neck. Damp-haired and carrying a fragrance akin to spruce, which means the other has assuredly just come from using her shower, Jacqueline has already pilfered another sweater. It's grey, several sizes too tall, the sleeves rolled up. Undeniably hers. And there's something that she distinctly _likes_ about that. As if it were a silent affirmation of how much the Junker is _hers_ as well.

" _Maidin mhaith_ ," she confides, turning her head to place a light kiss to the other's cheek, then taking a slow sip of coffee from her mug. It's just short of scalding, black, and quite strong, which is pleasant. Just shy of overly bitter. Superb. " _Go raibh maith agat_."  
** Good morning/Thank you

A return of the gesture finds the side of her neck, a pleasant warmth spreading from where it does, and she's held perhaps a touch more snugly at that. She could get used to mornings like this, she surmises. 

"Hola? I'm still on the line. Was that sweet-talking?" Olivia's voice drawls out mischievously in her ear, sounding pleased as punch to have witnessed it, if only audibly. It's followed by an exclamation of, " _Gabriel_. _¿A dónde vas?_ We have Christmas shopping,  
_recuerda?_ "  
** Where are you? Remember?

"Hell," Gabriel rasps in the background. "Let me change quick. Got chocolate on my pants. You going to give me back my comm?" Then, more loudly as if to ensure that she can hear when that action is not forthcoming, "If I survive the afternoon with these two, I'll message you later, alright?"

"Grand," Moira drawls out lowly, another sip of her coffee taken. The comm, thankfully, clicks off shortly thereafter, leaving them alone in the early morning. She glances at Jacqueline over the rim of the mug. The Junker's irises are almost the precise colour of the coffee within it, though as the foliage shifts in the crisp breeze, they warm to a hue akin to chocolate in the pale, golden sunlight. 

"It's cold as fuck out here," is what the Junker murmurs near her ear, voice still a bit thick and accent prominent this early in the morning. She knows it is, at least to the other, the hint of pink at the cheekbones and the nose evidence enough that the brisk air is a shock to the Junker's system.

"Mm," Moira answers with a thoughtful hum, tilting her head just so to look at the Junker in the pale light of morning. A hint of a smirk curls the corner of her lips as she does so, a low lilt observing, "You could have remained inside where it was warm. Or brought a jacket, of which there are many in the same closet you pilfered _this_ from."

Her taloned hand finds the sleeve of the sweater, tugging it lightly in emphasis. 

A little sound of mirth follows from Jacqueline at that, those sun-warmed eyes half-lid in amusement as the other teases, "I thought you'd be warmer."

She ghosts a knuckle along the other's bare calf and watches gooseflesh prickle over the skin with immediacy in its wake. With the pointed arch of a brow, Moira takes a sip of her coffee and confides, "You may also have attempted pants. Socks. Slippers."

With a snort of amusement, Jacqueline chides simply, "Stop it." Hands creeping up the back of her shirt to warm themselves there, the Junker points out, "And after I brought you coffee, even."

"And what incentive shall you provide?" Scarlet and blue eyes search night-dark a moment, and the corner of her lips quirks up in response. Resting the warmer hand there instead, she rubs lightly to alleviate the chill in a momentary concession.

"Peace of mind," comes the offer, drawled too mischievously to be of true intent.

"I sincerely doubt that," Moira answers in the wake of a smooth chuckle, taking another sip of coffee.

"I could make you breakfast," comes the second, a thread of mirth to that smooth voice as Jacqueline lifts the coffee cup from her hands and steals a quick draught, though it's settled back in her hand thereafter.

"Ah. Have we resorted to threats already?" Moira drawls out slowly at that, gaze not leaving the other's as her brow arches subtly further. She's well aware that a smirk touches her lips now. They will bury her in Dublin before she allows Jacqueline Vargas to cook in her kitchen. Beans on toast, indeed. She is acquainted enough with Junker fare to be adequately dubious.

"You're a motherfucker in the morning," a low murmur comes from the Junker at that, tattooed fingers slipping into her hair to stroke lightly through it, one to either side. They are cool to the touch, but the look that finds her from behind dark lashes is nothing but warm in juxtaposition. 

She is the sentiment of that statement, if not its literal meaning. And this? This week. This time. This _them_. She finds that it is something that she would care to keep. There is a notion tucked in the back of her mind, that she has known since Junkertown. But that until it could shatter, snap between her fingertips like the hollow bones of a songbird held too close, she could not be certain. She isn't good with delicate things, to keen to push and prod, try to take it apart and discern the function.

Jacqueline is no delicate thing. Not wholly. But there are delicate parts, fragile sections secured beneath the rust and bullet-proofing that she has held now within taloned hands and found no desire to crush within her palm. That are intact. That look warmly at her in a way that few do, have worked their way beneath her own armour and found a home there. A home here. 

_And there are so few places for creatures like us._

Half-turning upon the stair, Moira catches the front of a borrowed sweater near its collar, tugs it forward until it brings the Junker with it and she can brush her lips to another's, gently, far too gently for them. For her. She finds them warm and soft, the return of the gesture just as feather-light to her own and lingering. Slow as the fluttering of lashes when they draw back just so, and those dark eyes slip open to find hers. 

If she had known once, sharp and seething in her office, her files confiscated by the brass and the research of _years_ wrought to ruin in an instant, her personal life in as many shattered pieces as her pride, that anyone could still look at her like that in the early morning sun, she wonders how much it would have changed in the years that followed. If she would have looked at Oasis, so much later, with more anticipation than the bitter resignation it began as. 

She will never tell her that.

"Come in," is what Moira says instead, feeling cool fingertips trace the freckles near the hollow of her throat. She catches them, places another light kiss to the first knuckle of the other's hand. "I will make you breakfast."

"Charmer," is what the Junker responds, and tangles their fingers together. When that slim frame rises, it draws her in its wake, back toward the sliding glass door. Back inside. 

Today starts as many others, early and sharp as the jolt of agony that roused her. But it softens around the edges, becomes a soft laugh, the scent of vanilla and cinnamon in the kitchen as she makes _pain perdu_ with both a Junker and a dingo underfoot. 

\--- 

It would be an understatement to say that things never quite turn out the way Jack expects them to.

It's not a bad thing. Certainly not lately.

It's led them to a place that she's fond of. A place that includes french toast and black coffee, the low lilt of Gaeilge in the kitchen, the crisp bite of the late autumn breeze when they spend breakfast on the patio. Somewhere that the days close warmly with the scent of burnt amber and bergamot on soft black sheets, idly tracing constellations of freckles over milky white skin wherever she can find them.

It's easier than Jack thought that it would be. Than she likely could have imagined if given a thousand years to unravel it: to occupy a solid, static space and not simply drift around one another on the periphery as they had been, catching stolen moments like summer fireflies over cheap, burnt coffee in the lower levels of the Genetics building.

It reminds her of their week in Junkertown in all the best ways, but there's no waiting for the other shoe to drop. No inevitable return to reality. Only the slow realization that this could be a reality for them. Will be soon, in fact. 

Should be, at least. Though it's becoming harder and harder to believe by the minute that this weekend - the day after tomorrow, in fact, checking her comm for the date - she and Moira are meant to be at her apartment in Oasis for an evening with her roommates. Her last night in her apartment, a send-off from Chance and Galveston that wouldn't be complete without football, cheap beer, and cheaper pizza. Then the last few boxes will find their way to the back of a sleek, black towncar and shuffle off to Moira's house. For keeps. 

There have been a few requests from the geneticist whose home she'll be sharing, but they've all been simple thus far. Shoes on the mat. Coats and sweaters on hangers in the closet rather than tossed over the back of the couch when she returns home. She listens. Mostly. Would probably listen more if she hadn't already caught Moira once, the sleeve of a spray paint-flecked hoodie brushed between a forefinger and thumb with an oddly content look upon a freckled countenance.

The idea that this will be their new normal is marginally difficult to comprehend, in part due to her current location. Settled not quite comfortably in the driver's seat of an unmarked transport vehicle on the outskirts of El Dorado, Jack wraps her arms around herself for warmth and watches for trouble through the viewport. 

It's miserable weather for a mission, and her breath clouds in the chilly air inside the vehicle, nose and cheekbones a little pink from the cold. It would be her luck that they end up in Mexico on a cold day, but there hasn't been much alternative so far. It finds her watching heavy, seasonal rain hammer down on the ceramic tiles outside, stirring up into a thick blanket of fog that coats much of the street. 

The frigid air that kicks through the vents carries a distinct hit of ozone, cold vegetation, a hit of salt air from the nearby sea. It carries with it a certain charge that has everything to do ith the fact that her squad is outside in inclement weather, setting up to hit a shipment in the middle of the night. The occasional rumble of thunder that shivers over the metal carapace of the transport isn't helping, nor are the arcs of lightning that crackle across the firmament here and there, back-lighting the old terra cotta steeples and towers that surround them. It reads much more like a scene out of a horror movie than it does a covert op. 

If Moira weren't out there, likely freezing cold in the rain, the taller woman would have something clever to say about it, she's certain. 

In a thick, spray paint-smattered hoodie and her leather jacket over faded, somewhat tattered jeans, Jack will admit that she's not particularly dressed well for this. At least she isn't outside, running around in the bitterly cold rain. At least she had the wherewithal to throw on her boots and grab her jacket before Reyes arrived at her apartment in the early morning, rousing her from bed after a night spent sorting out what she will and won't be taking with her on her move. 

The transport, at best, had a mediocre heating system. Past tense, as she had to disable it to keep the engine running the fourth time it stalled out on the way here. 

And while under normal circumstances, it would be preferable to find Moira to steal a bit of extra warmth, that had become a distinct impossibility when the other was dressed in head-to-toe body armour and a biotic tank, especially with the spikes, but all the more so when the Irishwoman had faded out of the transport and into the rain. 

Bouncing her leg nervously to keep herself a little warmer, and perhaps to expel a little bit of anxious energy, Jack scans the street outside the viewport for what feels like the hundredth time, no that she can see much beyond the fog and the rain. There's something about all of this that she distinctly _doesn't_ like, though it isn't anything tangible yet, nothing that she's been able to put her finger on directly. It doesn't help that she's shut in here, the interior illumination clicked off and the exterior window tint set to maximum in the event that anyone outside decides to look _in_.

She isn't technically supposed to be here. But so it goes. Turns out that when your only available transport - Akande wouldn't tell her where the rest were at the moment - is a...well. It's a junker. It's apparently thought best to have your mechanic on hand in the event that shit goes south. She'd call almost dropping into the surf on the way here fairly south, can still see the way that Reyes' knuckles went white on the arm-rests when she diverted power to keep them up. She might also be able to attribute that to Sombra's driving, but that's certainly nothing she's going to bring up aloud.

 _Quirks_ , Akande had told her on the comm the third time she called him to chew him out. About thirty seconds after she'd had to turn off everything nonessential so they could stand a chance at limping their way down this sidestreet to set down. Jack might call him again later. The first time had been this morning, shortly after Gabe pounded on her apartment door, leaving her barely enough time to lace up her boots and drop Barra off with Chance before she was out, jumping into the back of the shuttle. 

He's at least going to have to spring for more tools, she muses, picking idly at a stray thread at the hem of her sweater. She needs more to work with. Maybe it's a test of some kind. She knows Reyes is still banking on their transport making it to the nearest Talon base in Castillo, where they should be able to catch a shuttle back home. It's not far, but she isn't hopeful. 

There are at least two dead cells in the main engine by her count, and unless they can stop time to buy her a few hours to take it apart _and_ she can con them into helping her steal parts out of some of the cars parked nearby, it's almost certainly a no-go. There's an inconsequential chance that they don't even lift off the ground, more of one that the engine fails mid-flight and they hit the street like a ton of bricks.

The occasional shuddering that ripples through the vehicle when the engine starts to stutter isn't exactly what she'd call heartening. 

No description of what they're doing has been forthcoming yet. Other than Reyes ordering her to stay put - which is still irksome - and Sombra pinching her cheek good-naturedly before promising to fill her in when they come back. So here she is. Sitting cross-legged in the driver's seat in the dark, trying and failing to spot anything of meaning in the whorling wisps of storm-ridden fog, and listening to the idle comm chatter as the strike team sets up in the nearby square. 

That's heartening at least, because on occasion the low lilt of Moira's voice will permeate through the line and it settles her a little. She hadn't anticipated a twinge of anxiety over them in the field, until they were in it. But it was the same in Junkertown, when she used to roll out with Jae and the boys. The wondering. Who will take a hit. Who won't. What friend might they have to bury today. While she _knows_. She _knows_ , that the Moira is a combat medic, she's never been privy to the before the fight. Only the tail end, the afterwards, when they've already made it out of shit fine. 

Gabriel hasn't said much, keeps his orders quick, short. Raspy intonations that ensures they are all in the appropriate formation, ready to hit the incoming vehicle as quickly and efficiently as possible. Get in - Get out. Smart. She wishes that she knew what they were looking for, but it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. Sombra had flickered from view as soon as they disembarked, and she's fairly certain that Widow is posted up on the rooftops. She's looked for her. The most she's seen is a brief silhouette backed by the flicker of lightning before the sniper was gone again. 

Mexico is miserable this time of year, is about as much as she's determined about this mission so far. Is it Spring here? Winter? She has no idea other than it's cold and damp, a fact not helped by the sudden winds over the sea and the multitude of systems she'd had to turn off in the transport earlier. When the walls tremble again, Jack believes it a nearby strike of lightning, the rattling echo of thunder in the heavens. _The first time_. But then something shifts in the mist on the viewscreen, back-lit by the crackling lightning in the sky overhead, and backed by an actual peal of thunder, and she stares for a long moment. 

It's massive. Hunched over on all fours as it looks about, checks something on the ground, adjusts some sort of weapon slung in an enormous hand and sniffs the air tentatively. The incisors gleam in the dim light for a half-second before it turns toward the heart of the square. And to be fair, if she hadn't _met_ Hammond before, she would highly consider that she's hallucinating right now. The creature turns, covering ground at a loping, ambling gait before all but launching up the side of a building to bound over to the next. On the rooftops. 

The comm clicks on, and she breathes into it, "Gorilla incoming. East side, near that swank hotel. Not sure if it knows I'm here."

"Winston," Moira observes in a low lilt on the comm at that. "Precisely what we needed at this juncture."

"Great," comes Reyes' voice immediately afterwards, a short snort of incredulity heard before he advises. "Watch your six, Widow. Can you keep eyes, Rook?"

Jack stands from her seat, leans forward over the dash to get a better look at the nearby building before answering, "Not unless you want me up a fire escape. Shouldn't be too hard to find one nearby."

His voice remains a touch firm, "Stay in the transport."

When she hears it, the hair on the back of her neck rises. Below the thunder, crackling in the street. It isn't the storm. It's munitions-fire. And God ever is she familiar with that. 

"Let me know if you want back-up," is what she confides for perhaps the seventh time since they landed. It suits her ill, sitting here in the dark when they're out there in _that_. It would be worth being cold to know that someone has their back, even though she _knows_ they've done this a hundred times before.

"What are you going to do?" comes Reyes' voice once more, the question rhetorical in that gravelly timbre. He sounds more and more dissatisfied with the second, and she can't blame him. It's miserable out, even without an incoming gorilla. She's watched too many nature documentaries to feel entirely comfortable.

"Ever see Godzilla versus Kong?" Jack responds amusedly nonetheless, her dark eyes rapt on the viewport once more as the fog stirs and shifts in eddies, whorling through the street like a river, the brick-worked buildings its steep banks. Nervous energy driving her, she taps the armrest repetitively when she settles back into the chair. Ten once. Ten again. _focus_. "I don't know, mate. I'm a Junker. Blow something up, probably."

Her upper lip curling faintly in displeasure when her nerves don't settle, she adds dryly, "Never threw knuckles at a gorilla before."

"Jacqueline," the intonation of her name is succinct in Moira's low lilt, as if the other weren't entirely sure if she's serious or not, but the sudden, delighted chuckle that sounds afterwards is definitely Sombra. She can always count on Liv. Even if she has _no idea_ where Liv is right now. At least her modded cloaking is working. Minimal shimmer, last she checked. 

At the periphery of her vision, something moves, and Jack reacts. She leaps up from her seat to cross to the far window, wipes a bit of condensation from it with the sleeve of her sweater to get a better view on whatever is incoming. Junkers know combat. They know ambushes. She would prefer that this operation not turn into one if they can avoid it, especially with a good number of people she _cares_ about out in the field. Moira. Liv. Gabe. Hell, even Widow.

The wind has picked up some, rattles the street-signs outside and makes everything more difficult to see between the sheets of torrential rain and ever-present coiling of fog. Good thing that motherfucker is tall. When she lifts the comm once more, the incredulity carries to her voice, "Huge armoured fucker coming through with a hammer. Your buddy Soldier's with him, I think. Not sure who the last one is, they're darting around like some sort of deranged glowbug. _Real fast_. It's hard to see."

"It's Oxton," Widowmaker's voice is velvety against the susurrus of rain and distant echoes of thunder. "Tracer. I have sights on her now, _cherie_."

"What kind of Planet of the Apes meets Medieval Times bullshit do these guys have going on?" Jack asks aloud, more to herself than anyone else. As they filter by, she can see a beam of incandescent light attach to the Soldier, casts a look up to see the form airborne above them, " _Angela_ is with them."

"They were expecting Doomfist," Reyes affirms in a hollow-edged voice, a note of resignation to it. She can imagine him rolling his shoulders, settling in for the scrap of the century. As if in anticipation of how difficult this has become in the span of a few minutes, and how much worse it will be once the heavies hit their line. 

A bitter feeling starts to settle in her bones. There's not one of them that looks like they could take a hit from that fucking hammer and live. She hopes turning into mist is enough. Her dark eyes track the procession up the street, following their trajectory toward the heart of El Dorado. _Towards her team_.

She can't stay in this goddamn transport. There's also nothing that she's going to be able to do about that motherfucker with the hammer. But there's a gleam of white and gold in the distance, and Jack is _fairly_ certain that she knows what that's about. It isn't a hard decision to make, all said and done, particularly when the sound of munitions fire picks up beneath the breaking storm. 

Cold rain trickles in around the collar of her hoodie when she steps outside, dampens the fabric and her hair alike to make it stick to the skin as the Junker shifts behind the line of parked cars on the side of the street. The sea of white fog drifts and pools around her, wicking at the nearby buildings and obscuring almost everything beneath her shoulders. If it were any taller, it would be a predicament. It could become a predicament if it gets any higher. 

But right now, in this moment, the cool, damp fog is providing enough cover to keep her out of sight as she makes her way slowly down the street, hood turned up against the wind and rain. No one _should_ be looking for her, and she's fairly certain, with how she's dressed, that if she is spotted it would be easy to mistake her for a pedestrian caught in the crossfire. The sound of gunfire is distant still. And from the voices on the comm, her team is well occupied currently.

"Moira on me. Sombra, need you to deal with those shields. Widow, you know what to do," Reyes snaps out on the line. The commander in him is a little more evident with each passing moment. "We have one shot at this."

" _Oui_ ," sounds in a velvet voice over the comm. 

"Gotcha," Sombra sounds off not long after.

Moira says nothing, and god does she _hate_ that. Tells herself that it's because the taller woman must already be with him. Must be. Has to be. Don't dwell on it. _Count to ten_ , Jack.

As she skirts around the end of the alleyway, it's easy to pick out the lights on the transport. _No_. Inside the transport. A golden glow that illumines the _open doorway_ like a beacon and makes the fog all around it look all the thicker, as if the clouds themselves had dropped down from the sky to say hello. _Don't rush it. You've got this_. It's what she tells herself as she keeps to the brick-worked walls, picks up the pace ever so slightly to close the gap between the vehicle and herself. 

When the opportunity provides itself, she ducks beneath the roiling fog and makes her way to the side of the transport proper, close enough to see the condensation beading on the crisp white and gold paint. Close enough to touch it, her fingertips light as she uses that touch to step closer and closer to the open doors of the transport bay in a slow circuit. It's a newer model, that's for certain. Custom. Two exterior alarms already dimly blue, disabled so they can't be tripped by the ever-shifting fog. Ramp down, bay wide open in a nimbus of brilliantly golden light. 

Crouching for a moment near the base of the ramp, she listens for footsteps and hears none, reaches back behind her to find the leather hilt of the knife tucked in her boot and slowly draw it out, the whisper of metal on leather all but inaudible as it leaves its sheath. Her other hand extended to steady her, Jack shifts up slowly, cranes her head around the corner of the open door to see if she can spot the pilot. He's in the cockpit, settled in the driver's seat, his leg bouncing idly in much the same fashion as she supposes hers must have been not too long ago. 

Water drips softly from her clothes onto the smooth metal as the Junker makes her way slowly along the interior wall. She suspects that it will be indistinguishable from the rain outside. Has to bank on it as she pauses near the door to the cockpit, head atilt as she simply listens for a moment, looks around. Two interior proximity alarms, one on either side of the door. Not hard to deal with, if you know what console to look behind and what wires to cut. It helps that he's listening to music, the tinny sound of some sort of rock heard as she uses the back-edge of the knife to unscrew a panel. Slowly, ever so slowly to prevent the screech of metal on metal.

It feels like an eternity passes with the sound of the strike team in her ear, the occasional tremor of the floor as the pilot's leg bounces idly, before she can get her hands on the panel and lift it off, set it to the side. But then it's only a matter of finding the right wire. Red. An alarm flickers off. Red. The second one doesn't, and she freezes when the music cuts out instead. Blue? There we go. There we fucking go.

"Hey Oxton."

The sound of the pilot's voice makes her start slightly, sudden as it is in the absence of any other sound. The chair beneath him creaks subtly as he stops bouncing his leg, fingers tapping on the dash as he keys something in. Distinctly American accent. 

"Think the sound system is on the fritz again."

Sound system. She catalogues that in the back of her mind, can't hear the other end of the conversation. Sound system. Good lights. Good sound to the engine underfoot, a pleasant thrum as it runs so smoothly she can barely feel it. Heat that seems prevalent even with the door wide fucking open. Indoor basketball set-up. Yeah, this isn't a hard call.

She's taking the transport.

"Sure. Sure," he intones up front. "I'll remind you when we're back at base. Give 'em hell for me."

Once the conversation has died out, silence reigning for at least a full two minutes, Jack shifts forward slowly. One foot in front of the other, slowly, excruciatingly slowly so as not to betray her presence on the vehicle with a too-heavy footstep or the accidental slip of a wet sole on the polished metal floor. It's not all that different than ambushing a scavver caravan, and she's done that in spades. 

Well. Except that no self-respecting scavver would leave the door wide open like a hand-written invitation to come rob them. Unless it was a trap, the frame lined with tripwire mines and the whole damned hold wired and ready to blow. 

This? This is amateur hour.

Thank you, shitty weather. 

Three. Two.

 _One_.

A droplet of rain rolls off her chin and hits his shoulder, dampening the fabric, and in the same instant that he looks up, there's a flash of silver in the interior lights, the creak of leather in her palm as she draws the knife up beneath his jaw and her tattooed fingers wrap in his hair to jerk his head back with decisive force. 

Brilliantly crimson, blood beads where the tip of the blade nicked beneath his jaw, a droplet of it trickling down the front of his neck to blot itself out in the collar of a blue shirt. Junker tactics. Show your teeth early and don't back the fuck down. Never let them see you second guess it.

Inked copper, her hand is twined tightly in his ash-blonde hair. She slides the blade down enough to ensure that the threat it presents is exceedingly clear, the metal making a raspy sound on the stubble on his neck. Dark eyes meet pale, lucid grey, hold them without a moment's hesitation when they search hers, her shoulders squared and countenance _hard_. It comes more easily than it should.

"Don't move," her voice is like smoke, smoother than it isn't. Heady with the promise of fire, that this will _burn_ if he makes the wrong call. "Comm on the floor. Left side. Activate it and your transport gets a new paint job." 

His fingertips shake a little as he reaches toward his ear.

"Just drop it, mate."

He does.

"There you go. That wasn't hard."

When he swallows, it's hard enough that it raises a thin line of red near his Adam's apple. The thin edge of that knife is _sharp_. She should know. She's the one who sharpened it, after all. This close, she can smell aftershave and fabric softener, an over-liberal application of cologne becoming apparent as he breaks out in a sweat. The stubble beneath his jaw feels like sandpaper, and she hates it.

It isn't hard to slide a boot over the comm on the floor, where it is, drag it back with the soft scraping sound of metal on metal and grind it to so many components beneath the heel of a boot with a sharp _crack_.

"Stand up. Not too fast," Jack pulls the knife tighter momentarily when he starts to move a little too quickly, leaves another fresh line of red at the column of his throat. 

She doesn't relinquish the hold on his hair or the steel at his throat. He has to have a foot on her, easily. It means that he has to stoop while she feels around for the pulse pistol holstered at his hip, slide it out of the belt one-handed and flick the safety off with a subtly calloused thumb. Nonlethal charge. It'll still kick like a fucking brumby if she shoots him with it. With a flick of the knife, one practiced movement, she withdraws out of his range and takes two swift steps back, holding the blade angled downward and the pistol braced on her wrist.

The leather at the hilt creaks subtly beneath her palm. It's comforting in that she's intimately familiar with it. Her knife doesn't jam. Junker necessity, even if you have a gun. Jack arches a brow, nods toward the open door without saying anything further.

"Ath-" 

She ratchets back the slide and squeezes the trigger, a blue-white flash of light ricocheting from the end of the pistol to slam forcibly into his sternum with a sickening sound and the scent of burned fabric. It smoulders in a dark mark at the front of his shirt as Pilotboy hits the chair, then the dash, then the floor all in rapid succession, all but sucking in a wheeze of air as he grasps his chest. 

"No talking," Jack asserts in a smooth cadence, and slides the setting to lethal. "The next one won't be a warning shot. Get up."

It takes him a minute to manage that one, after all, he has to catch the air that was driven out of his lungs first. Yeah. That's going to bruise like a motherfucker. Sorry, champ. His hands grip the back of the chair as he steadies himself, grey eyes watering when they find her again.

She lifts her chin in a scarce nod, doesn't move the barrel from where it's sighted on him as she directs, "Turn out your pockets. You can drop it all on the seat. Move slowly."

Items clink off the leather seat as he complies. It's about what you'd expect. Wallet. Credit clip. Keys. Cigarettes. Lighter. One of those little Overwatch comms they left at her apartment one time, must be his backup. 

Dark gaze never leaving him, Jack tilts her head toward the nearby ramp as the rain picks up, thunder rattling the windows. In its wake, she states simply, "Walk down the ramp and put yourself up against the hood of a car. Hands on the back of your head."

Tall and broad at the shoulders, he stares at her for a long second, and she doesn't like how his gaze flicks to the gun, so she applies a modicum of pressure to the trigger. Just enough tension to be shy of pulling it. He knows it, swallows once more, the red lines at his throat jumping with the action. 

"Right, mate," there's a dangerous edge to her voice now, and her dark eyes narrow faintly. "I don't have all day to fuck around with you. _Move_."

His footfalls are heavy when he steps through the transport bay, hands clasped behind his head. He walks down the ramp slowly, nervously, out into the fog to stand up against the line of parked cars on the side of the street. If there weren't so much mist roiling around in the street, she'd have him lay face-down on the ground. It would make it harder for him to get up, make a run back toward the transport. But right now, it also would put him out of her line of view, which is an unacceptable risk. 

Tucking her knife in the back of her belt, Jack hits the controls near the door to send close it, activates the security locks well before she ever even considers lowering the pistol in her hand. He was stupid to leave the transport so ill-secured. She can't afford to be. Now she just has to turn the damned thing over. Opacity on the windows to maximum. Lights to low. Back to the command console to clear the security codes and jack Aro into the interface for ease of use. 

She doesn't exhale a breath of relief until the engines hum to life and the transport lifts off above the street, after which she sets a course back to the one she left behind and sets about investigating what _else_ they have in here. The basketball court is a nice touch. Shelves of tools, an entire corner converted into a makeshift medbay, complete with a table. A _shower_. Games. By the time Jack cracks open a cupboard to find it full of snacks, with a fully functional refrigerator built-in, she has stopped being surprised.

All she does is grab a bag of red vines and a Nano Cola, tucking them in her pockets so she can carry other things. Three bottles of liquor, someone's civilian clothes, and an oxygen tank come up to the cockpit with her. Sliding the cold can of cola onto the dash and cutting open the bag of red vines, she takes a bite of one before calling up the comm.

"Rook here," Jack announces as she drops back into the driver's seat, keeping her hands busy by cutting strips of cloth and dropping them into a heap at her feet. "Got us a new transport. There anything you need out of the old one?""

The sound of distant, concussive gunfire permeates the line when Reyes responds, followed by someone shouting _Hammer Down!_ on the other end of the call, a sentiment followed by what could only be considered a colourful string of expletives from their commander and then, "No. Wait. What?"

Uncorking the bottles, Jack starts to stuff strips of cloth down into them and leans them up against the far wall as the transport comes to a halt just shy of the other. She kicks the heat up a few degrees, starting to shiver from being so fucking damp from the rain. No trembling hands for this next bit. 

"Ours wasn't going to make it back home," Jack answers distractedly, cracking open the chassis of the pulse pistol with the back of her knife and starting to rewire it, having to stand up to keep her hands as close to the heat vent in the dash as possible. Blowing up the vehicle that you just stole isn't part of the plan. "It's about to be on fire."

Yellow wire to the blue wire. She threads the tab from her soda between them, attaches them to the secondary circuit and sees a little jump of electricity, wondering if there might be a bag of crisps in the back of the cupboards somewhere. Taking another bite of red vine instead, she chews thoughtfully as she remarks, "Unless you want to drop into the sea on our way back. Then I guess we can take it."

" _How_ is it about to be on fire?" Now he sounds a little incredulous, and she can't really blame him for that. God, she's freezing. "Are you _eating_ right now?"

"Yeah, there were red vines," Jack observes without thinking any more of it, the chassis of the weapon cracked back in place with a soft _snap_ before she ties it to the oxygen tank with a strip of cloth. "I'm building explosives."

"I told you to stay in the transport," comes a gruff retort.

"You tell me a lot of things I don't strictly listen to," Jack answers distractedly, testing the switch on the pistol and feeling an immediate spike of heat beneath the metal and ceramic of it's exterior. Good. Good-good-good. 

"That's fucking fair," Reyes states with a snort. "Sombra, do you have the package?"

" _Un momento_. Initiating the hack," Sombra sounds off immediately afterward, a brief pause before the other's voice tacks on. "I need a pick-up, sending you coordinates. And there had _better_ be red vines when you get here, _Crook_."

"Mm," Jack leans back in her seat, eyeing the viewport as the coordinates come through. She hops up from her seat and moves back toward the ramp. It's easy enough. When it lowers just enough to toss the oxygen canister over the edge, she activates the pistol and then kicks it off onto the other transport below.

The result is a cacophonous blast of fire, one that scours over the street and sets off car alarms in every direction, kicking up a massive amount of steam where it hits the rain-soaked pavement. Fire in the rain, crackling merrily as it consumes all of the more flammable pieces of the transport below. Not a few skittering pieces of metal ricochet off the bottom of the stolen vehicle she's in, scratch up the paint. Cosmetic damage, nothing more. The backdraft of heat is almost nice, before the door closes. 

Jack moves back toward the cockpit to drop into the driver's seat and punch in the coordinates and head in Sombra's direction, "You're cute, Liv. But are you _that cute_?"

" _Pardon?_ sounds over the comm in a familiar, velvety voice, and she actually laughs at that. Widowmaker.

"Girls," Reyes states with more than a little exasperation at _them_ now, "Think we can save it for later?"

"On my way," the promise falls easily from her lips, chased by a soft sound of amusement as she bounces her leg idly in distraction. It isn't far, and as she kicks the transport back into gear, Jack finds herself exceedingly thankful for the decision to find a new fucking one instead of trying to run the other. "Tell you what, Sombra. You grow a foot and catch some freckles before I get up there, maybe I'll think about it."

The chuckle that sounds on the comm at that is smooth, all whiskey and smoke in a way that carries through to Moira's voice. It makes her eyes fall half-lid as if by rote, the tips of her fingers feel a little warm as the other drawls out slowly, "Jacqueline. Kindly set aside a few for me, if you would."

There's a zero percent chance that Moira fucking O'Deorain eats red vines. Zero. Absolute nil. It makes her crack an ear to ear grin. 

"Worse than Blackwatch, the lot of you," Reyes' voice is gruff on the line, good-natured but exasperated as he observes. "Don't fuckin' encourage them."

She knows how to play this game, sweet-talking on the comm. Dark gaze set on the viewport as she steers around a church steeple, Jack allows her cadence to drop, if only a touch, the words impossibly smooth as she intones with more than a little suggestion, "Mm. For you, babe? Anything."

"Christ," Reyes this time. She can't help but to laugh at that, dark eyes glittering with mirth. 

"Wow. _WOW_ ," Somba now, more than a little dramatic. "And to think, betrayed by _mi amiga_. The story of my-" It cuts off suddenly, a note of trepidation to that cheeky cadence as the other rattles off, "Incoming. They're on the roof."

There's a reassuring note to Widowmaker's voice at that, absolute confidence in the assertion of, "I have you, _cherie_."

Tattooed hands playing over the console to lower the ramp as she sets the transport down, in good spirits, and actually starting to warm up from being out in the wind and the rain, it isn't something that Jack immediately puts together. Not that they mean her. Not that they mean the stolen transport emblazoned with Overwatch paraphernalia. Not until the hazy pinpoint of a red-dot sight flickers across the viewport to rest just above her heart. 

"It's Rook," Jack confides, dark eyes glancing down and then back up, unable to pick out where the sniper has posted up on the surrounding buildings. "It's me. God, if you fucking shoot me, I swear to G-"

In a dangerously light cadence that she has only just started to place as what passes for the other's humour, Widomaker remarks, "Ah. Sombra?"

It carries the distinct undertone of, _I could still take the shot_. Sniped on a mission in Mexico by one of the world's most dangerous assassins over red vines. What a fucking way to go that'd be. She keeps her hands up, at least until Sombra has sidled up behind her chair and leaned directly over her to catch up the open package. 

"You're both fuckers," Jack asserts on the comm, snorting softly when the red dot flickers away. Stealing another stripe of candy, she deftly avoids the attempt to smack her hand away and takes a bite from the end as she sinks back in the pilot's chair.

A hip bumps the side of her chair an instant before a purple-gloved hand pinches her cheek for the second time today, Sombra's voice carrying a cheeky note as the other wrinkles her nose, observes, "I think we can let her live. _This time_."

"Boop." The fingertip that taps the end of her nose is light, makes her wrinkle it back. Violet-blue eyes impish, Sombra gestures toward the chair and states cheekily, "You're in my seat, Crook."

A soft sound of mirth escapes her at that, little more than the half-beat of a chuckle. It doesn't surprise her by far. Levering up out of her seat, Jack simply moves the three steps over toward a passenger seat and drops into that instead, another bite taken from the red vine before she secures the seat-buckle. Heated seats are pretty nice, she's decided.

The soft clearing of a throat behind her makes her jump, at least until a familiar, lithely blue form drifts around her chair to take a seat nearby. It doesn't go unnoticed that the assassin buckles a seatbelt, either. 

"Alright, bring it around for pick-up. We need to get the fuck out of here," Reyes barks into the comm, and she winces, snatches the earpiece out of her ear at the series of concussive blasts that sound afterwards, accompanied an all-but-shouted cacophony of, "DIE. DIE. DIE."

"Really, _Muerte_?" Sombra asks the question that she's thinking, spares her an ass-kicking in the training room later over it. 

"Just bring it around," he orders at that. He sounds more solid now. Tangible in a way his hollow voice was not only a moment prior. 

Using her foot to slide the box of makeshift Molotovs closer, Jack braces a boot on either side of them to hold them there. It's a smart move, considering that Sombra punches the engine into gear so hard she's fairly certain _she_ would fly across the cockpit if she wasn't strapped into her goddamn chair. 

Sombra can drive. Jack has already seen her pull off some shit with her neural network that she couldn't even dream of doing on her own. It's just that Sombra also drives like an _absolute fucking madwoman_. Rolling around in the centre of Hammond's mecha is probably preferable. 

Still, Sombra gets them to the square _fast_. Which is lucky, because no sooner has the hacker banked them down than they make a rocky landing between a charging knight and the remainder of their team up the way. That armoured fuck hits the transport so hard that the windows rattle and she worries for a second that they may tank their second ride if they keep it up. But it means, more importantly, that he _doesn't_ hit Moira or Gabe. 

"Rein west side," Sombra confirms around a mouthful of red vines, already unbuckling to make her way toward the door. Her hand finding the necks of green glass bottles, Jack follows suit, having the wherewithal to snatch the lighter that's fallen onto the dash up on her way. 

"I am _well_ aware," comes a lowly lilting voice over the comm, laden with foreboding, and the hair on the back of her neck prickles.

"Widow, can y-" Reyes starts to speak but falters into a low grunt, as if he's been struck. A raspy sound of displeasure follows, "Fuck."

It doesn't matter. Widow is already on her feet, slender and lithe, looming in the open doorway like an angel of death with eight red eyes on her visor focused in on the scope. No sooner than the sniper spots them, a shot fires. Then another. Then another. Then another, the sharp _crack_ of sniper fire reverberating loudly in close quarters to ring in her ears. Lacroix is ruthlessly efficient, forces the incoming squad to _pause_ and take notice.

" _Cherchez la femme_ ," fall from those lips in a velvet cadence, Widowmaker catching someone in the distance directly in the shoulder before a rattling hail of rifle-rounds scatter around them in the transport. 

Jack catches sight of the shooter as Lacroix ducks in to reload. She'd recognize that red-slit visor and the pretentious, blue-white body armour anywhere at this rate. Fucking Soldier. When he starts to move nearer, she catches the white wick of a Molotov with the lighter, grasps it by the neck, and hurtles it toward the line of cars he's sheltered behind. Flames well up on the hood of the vehicle, crackling over the metal to peel and blacken the paint. 

Sombra has already disappeared, a flicker of lavender in the distance denoting the hacker's presence as the other reappears in the vicinity of the nearby church, SMG firing at something. Someone. Maybe the gorilla, she doesn't know. 

All she knows is that imperiously tall, with ginger hair slicked to the scalp from the rain, Moira is still out in the square. Still deadly in black-lacquered body armour, one hand twisting into a claw to catch the slim form zipping around herself and Reyes with a lash of virulently purple energy and send them flickering back away. The other lean arm is braced around Gabe, holding him up as they try to make their way _back_.

He's hit. She can tell, even without being close enough to see the bloodied wound at his side or the flecks of crimson mingling with beads of rain on the white ceramic of his mask. It's written in his posture, the way he can't quite stand up, the way that putting one foot in front of the other is difficult. It doesn't stop him from lifting his arm when the slim, glowing form of Tracer darts back in, or from firing a round into that incandescent chest-piece to make its lights flicker and jolt. 

The roar that sounds from the nearby rooftops is bone-chilling, raises something instinctual in her, the same sensation that her ancestors must have felt alone in the dark, huddled in caves to shelter from the elements and the beasts beyond the firelight. She can't say that her heart doesn't stop when the pavement quakes underfoot and a rampaging primate hits ground between Reyes and the currently malfunctioning Tracer. 

Jack is certain that it doesn't start beating again until those immense, gnarled hands slam down into nothing but smoke, beating the earth beneath Reyes instead of turning him into so much paste on the pavement. They're too far out. She recognizes that now. They're too far out and with too many heavies to make it back alone. The scent of burning hair carries on the wind and the rain as a whirling orb of amaranthine blackens the back of the primate's armour, and Jack's boots hit the ramp, the incoming rifle-fire forcing her into a slide at the base of it until Widow can return cover-fire. 

She can see the glints of blue in the distance as the translocator sputters and jumps. She can see the _armoured fucking knight_ that slams into the brickwork beside them, the swing of the hammer that narrowly misses taking Moira's goddamn head off. 

_They're too far out_.

But like fuck can she just leave them there. There's no gun, so plan A went straight to hell about twenty or so minutes ago.

Scuffed combat boots thrum over wet asphalt as the rain sluices back down through her clothes, feeling like ice where it bleeds through her hoodie to reach the tattooed skin underneath. Her hair is plastered to her face after only about a minute out in it, but there's no time to concern herself with that, or anything else on the periphery. Not the pervasive cold or the shivers its driving up, the way it makes her hands tremble with more than just adrenaline. Not the smell of fire and metal and burning hair on the rain. 

Nothing beyond the shouting at the end of the square, the echoing blasts of shotgun fire as it sounds off again and again and again, ammunition scattering off a domed shield as bricks break, and her team holds a line that's drawn in sand at a proverbial high tide. It's familiar, the adrenaline in her veins, the way it makes the muscles ache and the synapses snap-fire.

Just like back home. Because back home it's jump or _get jumped_.

Luckily, she's familiar with both. Another rattle of rifle-fire drives her down behind a nearby car, but she scrabbles around in the cobblestone to find a loose rock and puts it through the driver's-side window, crouched up alongside the door as she reaches through it to unlock it from the interior. It scatters glass everywhere, glistening like crystal on the leather interior, but she doesn't have time for _that_ , either, and crams herself between the seat and the console to lever the latter open with a twist of the knife.

It exposes wires, which is what she _does_ need right now. It's not as easy as it would be with an older model, but she'll just have to make it work. She almost fries the internal wiring twice before stripping the plastic off the ends of the blue and yellow wires and touching them together, feeling a marginal relief when the engine purrs to life beneath her. Good enough.

Not bothering to buckle or even shut the door as she slings herself into the driver's seat, Jack slams the knife down in the seat beside her and finds the pedal with one boot. She pushes it to the floor, the engine growling as she veers out into the street, clipping the open door on another car to send it skittering off along the cobblestones. 

Almost spinning out in the rain, Jack narrowly manages to straighten the vehicle out before her second round of auto theft can end prematurely. She puts it into higher gear as it picks up speed, calls out into the comm above the sound of the rain, "Liv, the shield!" 

The tires rattle uneasily off the uneven bricks, threatening to send her hydroplaning again as she shifts up a gear. It's followed by the sharp intonation of, "Gabe. _FADE_ ," before she punches it. 

She almost clips him still, close enough that she can see the dull crimson of his eyes before he flickers into smoke and ash, passes through the vehicle to buffet around in its wake. Dark eyes flick toward the rearview mirror to see him solidify, standing on both feet, if listing somewhat to the side, and she exhales in relief. One hand on the steering wheel as the car rattles about, she uses the other to hastily buckle the seatbelt and prays that this piece of shit has airbags. 

" _¡Apagando las luces!_ " rings out on the comm an instant before she thinks she's about to scatter across the front of the knight's rectangular shield in the moment he spots her, lifts it. 

It flickers out.

"Meteor strike, motherfucker," is what falls from her lips the instant before she hits him, and God, is she going to be pissed off if that's the last thing she ever says. 

Metal screams on metal as an unstoppable force meets an immovable object and proves them both neither, the hood of the car buckling like the metal cuirass of his chest-plate as the vehicle slams into him and he slams into the brick-worked wall, terra cotta tiles falling down on both of them. The airbags go off, which is good. It keeps her face from slamming into the steering wheel, fills the car with a white powder that smells sickly, bitter and of smoke, burns her knuckles a little where it lands. 

She's more than a little dazed in the instant between everything going black and someone using her own knife to cut her out of the seatbelt, realizes when she opens them to a tall, imperious-looking medic that she must have closed her eyes at the last second. Nothing broken. Nothing pinned between the engine and the seat. Nothing but a persistent cough from the dust as a taloned hand reaches out for her and she takes it, scrambling out onto the pavement and stumbling briefly before she finds her feet. 

More tiles clatter down, and a hand on her elbow helps hold her up as the move into the street. She has no idea how that fucker is still alive, even if he can't quite move with a _car_ holding him in place, but the knight _laughs_ as they skirt away, the sound deep and somehow jovial despite it's undercurrent of pain, "Haha! Still kicking."

Moira presses the hilt of the blade into her hand, the leather wet from the rain, and her tattooed fingers curl around it instinctively as they make their way back to Gabe, both watching the rooftops for the return of _Kong_. At least the gorilla isn't on the ground, which means he isn't beating Reyes into it at the moment. 

She's going to be sore as fuck tomorrow. 

"You fuckers need a heavy," is all she says when they reach Reyes, and she braces an arm under his as Moira takes the other side. Her shoulder is already painfully stiff, as is her sternum where the seatbelt rested to prevent her from rocketing through the windshield.

"Fuckin' tell me about it," comes a raspy response from Reyes, his black armour slick with blood along one side and dull, crimson eyes faintly incandescent in the light. The wisps of darkness that lick along his skin seem more prominent, and she isn't sure if it's from anger or pain. 

It's ill-advised. Moira's countenance is sharp already, scarlet and blue eyes scanning the roof, but occasionally falling on them with a look she doesn't altogether like. 

"I know a guy," Jack observes hoarsely against her better judgement, having to cut off for a moment to cough. Her lungs are burning from the dust strewn from the airbags. "Works for peanuts."

Not far now, they're closing on the transport. She can see the slender silhouette of Widowmaker, back-lit in the open door, and feels a little better when Sombra flickers into place beside the sniper. 

"I swear, if you say that fuckin' hamster," Reyes cuts off in a pained grunt as they close in on the last few steps. Because the pavement has started to tremble again, his head turning to look over one shoulder. He encourages simply, "Get up there."

As if the smartest thing to do would be to leave him. Jack doesn't have to look at Moira to know that Moira _doesn't plan on that_. It's not even a question, but written in the way that Gabe becomes a heavier weight on her shoulder and the medic whips around. She all but wrestles him up the ramp, helped when Sombra comes down to catch his arm. They manage to get him in a seat before she turns back, ready to run back out and collect their last comrade.

She comes to a halt at the top of the ramp, stock still in the wind and the rain as the hair prickles at the back of her neck. It takes her a moment to realize what exactly is happening. 

" _Géill do mo thoil!_ "

It sounds in the devil's voice, low and sonorous with power. It crashes like the green salt waves on a distant, rocky shore, pulls at her like a riptide about to take her under. It sounds of creation and destruction as it makes and unmakes the world around it, a brilliant beam of gold-black light that erupts from the outstretched hands of Moira O'Deorain to strike the massive ape barreling down the way at them dead centre in the chest. It blackens the white of its armour, forces it to take cover behind the line of cars, effectively covers the medic's timely retreat back into the transport an instant before Sombra sends the ramp up and the door hisses shut. 

Breathing hard, Moira stands imperiously tall near the newly-closed door, copper hair slicked back from her angular features from the rain. Scarlet and blue eyes fall to her momentarily, and Jack catches the other's hand, cold and more than a little clammy, to apply a faint pressure. There's the faintest upturn to the corner of the other's lips at that, a return of the gesture before that impossibly tall form releases her, stepping around to find Reyes as if by rote.

She has to assume by the fact that the transport has lifted off, that Widow has the helm, piloting them toward Castillo.

\--- 

It's somewhat warmer once Jack has been through the shower, the last of those not embroiled in the medical patch to head through - after Sombra and Widow. The hoodie that she pulled out of a locker labeled L. Oxton is warm, comfortable enough, even if the corresponding tights are Day-Glo yellow. They fit alright and aren't soaking wet, which means she isn't freezing to death anymore. 

The locker she's in right now is home to a leather-bound medical journal and labeled A. Ziegler. It's also mostly empty, so she suspect that she knows where Widow got ahold of a black turtleneck and slacks. Sombra, last she knew, is still lounging around near the rec table in someone's Summer Games pajamas, and to be honest, Ziegler doesn't strike her as the polar bear-patterned pants and yeti slippers type. She could be wrong. 

Catching up the journal to look at it briefly, Jack stoops to pick up the dog-eared photograph that falls out of it, turning it over to see the faded image of both her most and least favorite doctors on the front of it, and wrinkling her nose. She replaces the journal, but keeps the photograph, at least insofar as it takes her to light one corner of it and toss it into the nearby bin to finish burning. It's petty, but she's feeling more than a little petty after scrapping with Overwatch for half a night.

She, Liv, and Widow are well into their first bottle of tequila and more than a few hands of cards by the time the squad reconvenes, the rec room table scattered with cellophane packages of crisps, cola bottles, and more than a fair assortment of sweets. The Swiss chocolate is a nice touch, Jack decides, melting a piece between the roof of her mouth and her tongue as she deals out cards again. 

Gabe, his ashen-brown skin a little paler than usual, seems more than a little put-out by his attire as he settles on the other side of Widow. The Hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts make him look like someone's try-hard _cool_ dad at a barbecue, and it's a look. To her credit, she's trying not to look at Moira at the moment, because as nice as the taller woman looks in a suit or dressed for the town, Moira O'Deorain in a pair of mechanic's overall's and a faded black t-shirt is checking boxes Jack didn't even know she _had_.

"Hey babe," Jack murmurs, tilting her head subtly as Moira leans down to peck her cheek, and feeling more than a little smug when that lanky frame settles beside her on the couch, a lean arm draped around her shoulders. "Widow cheats at poker."

With a little sound of exasperation, she tosses down her cards and asserts, "I fold."

Widow has nothing. Figures. It's impossible to tell what the sniper has from expression alone. Meanwhile, Liv is sorting out the sweets they've been using to bet into colour-coordinated piles, occasionally unwrapping one to pop it into her mouth and looking pleased as punch the _entire_ time.

Damp still from the shower, Moira's coppery hair is slicked back, and she smells of ozone and a hint of iron, pale countenance yet a little pink from exertion or perhaps from the cold. It's moderately distracting. That's a lie. It's hot. It's more than a little hot, and the cocky look that briefly flickers over the taller woman's countenance when she catches her looking tells her that the other is _well aware_ of her reaction, as easily as the lowly drawled intonation of, "Is that so?" near her ear does. 

Maybe it's the alcohol. Hell, maybe it's the proximity of the goddamn devil to her ear, but that makes her feel a little warmer than usual. She can feel it at the tips of her ears when she catches Moira's chin with her fingertips before the other can withdraw too far, tries not to notice the smirk that curls the corner of the taller woman's lips as she asks, "What did that mean?"

 _Get a grip, Jack._ is all she can think when her dark gaze flicks to them, then back up to meet scarlet and blue. 

"I thought my meaning was obvious," Moira's cadence is all whiskey and smoke by comparison, smooth and low in a way that would never indicate they'd been out in a firefight not a few hours past. A perfect brow arches subtly, but those vivid, heterochromatic eyes remain on her as long fingers snap once and the doctor requests, "Deal me in if you would, Olivia."

"I meant what you said when you threw that," Jack doesn't know what to call it, so she extends her arms in front of herself and places a palm to the back of the opposite hand to demonstrate. "At them."

There's a sly smile at that. One that she doesn't like one bit.

Dark eyes contemplative of that, Jack casts a sidelong look over those freckle-dusted features, reading nothing in their pale hint of rose but that selfsame smugness before she observes, "I've heard you say that before, babe."

She has. It was under vastly different circumstances. Ones she probably shouldn't be dwelling on half as much as she is, and from which she isn't even remotely deterred from when Moira tips back the bottle of tequila to take a swig directly from it. There's a sound of mirth, a mere half-beat of a chuckle before the taller woman confides, "So I have."

It's followed by a _tsk_ , the light grasping of her chin in cool fingertips as Moira directs, as if that was what she was focused on anyways, "Keep your eyes on your own cards, Jacqueline."

The current pot appears to be someone else's wallet, the pilot's car keys, and assorted confections. Gabe leans back in his chair, crimson eyes settling on something on the far side of the room before he asks in a raspy timbre, "Do I want to know why the bin is smoking?"

"No," Jack asserts without pause. 

"It means _surrender to my will_ ," falls from those lips without a flicker of shame, the corner of them twitching up in seeming faint amusement at her incredulous look afterwards. Scarlet and blue eyes, heady behind coppery lashes, meet her own and that brow arches a little further. 

She's the first one to look away, warmth creeping over the back of her neck and followed by the idle tracery of cool fingertips, a light touch. It's not helpful. Not even remotely. And the words didn't need _that much_ emphasis.

Jack licks her lips slowly, sinks back into the couch a scarce measure, and simply tosses her cards onto the table without looking at them, each one still face-down as she intones simply, "I fold."

Another low _tsk_ sounds before Moira confides in a low lilt, altogether sounding the cat that ate the canary, "And here I thought you might."

"Stop it," Jack shoots back with a soft snort, though her countenance feels a little warmer, coppery complexion cast with a hint of rose at the cheekbones and the shell of the ears. 

"It means," Gabriel rasps out lowly, cutting off in a grunt when he reaches for an open bag of chips and it strains at his side. He looks thankful when Liv slides it over to him instead, and observes around a mouthful of chips, "That she's dramatic."

"This, from the man who shouts _die_ repeatedly whilst in combat?" Moira counters easily enough, a pointed look offered Reyes from across the table at that. "Pot, kettle."

While she feels a little disappointed when the comfortable weight around her shoulders shifts, Moira's arm withdrawn so the other can sort our cards with both hands, Jack isn't arguing with the way a slender hand comes to rest at her thigh afterwards, either. Also comfortable, if twice as distracting.

"Sooo...what's all _this_ about then?" Sombra inquires at that, making a vague gesture in front of the Junker's countenance.

Jack makes a brief-lived sound in the back of her throat at that, leans her chin comfortably to Moira's shoulder, which is warm beneath the threadbare fabric of a shirt. Observing the other's hand of cards in silence, she lifts her brows subtly in surprise. 

" _Je plie_ ," Widowmaker observes with a soft displeasure, cards placed precisely down at that.  
** I fold

"I fold," Reyes grumbles afterwards, following suit. 

"She said it in bed one time," the Junker admits, dark eyes meeting Liv's violet-blue to watch them widen faintly in shock.

"For fuck's sake," is all Gabe manages at that.

"Oh. _Oh_ , in b- _¿Es en serio?_ " Liv laughs suddenly at the revelation, a cheeky smile almost from ear to ear, "I feel like I just _learned something_ about you both here today."  
** Seriously?

A low, thoughtful hum sounds from Moira at that, and the taller woman sets a hand of cards down face-up on the table: a whole lot of nothing that just won the round.

"I see what you did there, _bruja_ ," the hacker across from them laughs aloud, catching one of the wrapped candies up before Jack can sweep them over toward their side of the table. "Cheaters."

"Yeah, and you're not over there counting cards for Widow like a little shit," Jack counters, noting that the sniper looks _none to thrilled_ at the deception. 

Liv just smirks at her, shoots back, "We'll see about that when it's strip poker, _mija_. I always win."

"Deal me back in," Jack retorts. 

She has enough red vines to spare.

_It's fucking on._


	36. even if i'm frozen solid, i hope that i'm honest

Calaveras is the name of the beachfront bar that Sombra takes them to, well after the transport has been secured at Talon's forward base and their erstwhile package has been shuttled off, already on its way to Rialto with an enterprising team of agents who _haven't_ been scrapping with Overwatch out in the chilling, torrential rain. After a variety of scrapes and bruises - and in Gabe's case, bullet wounds - have been tended to, of course. Well after they have had the wherewithal to change back into their own, dry clothes and failed to settle into hotel rooms for the night only to find that none of them can sleep. Well, that had left running out on the town with Liv, Reyes, and Widow, didn't it?

There was a brief video conference with Akande, of course, if only to secure confirmation that they could remain in Mexico another day. Sombra had been most responsible for that, promising, as ever, that she had sights to show them: the market, the beach, the stretches of glistening white sand that they saw through the rain on the flyover of Castillo. Tomorrow, she promised. The adrenaline of _today_ hasn't quite worn off, and they're all long past a second wind, wide awake when they most certainly shouldn't be. 

And right now? Right now, the sights include more than one's standard amount of mezcal, some tosti locos, and fruit with tajin in Liv's favorite dive bar on the coast. Jack isn't complaining. It's all delicious. She never realized how hungry she was after their extended scrap in downtown Dorado, but the mangos are sweet and spiced with chili, the beer is cold and served with fresh sections of lime, and the mezcal has a smoky undercurrent to it that's lingering pleasantly on the palate on the aftermath of every sip. 

Settled in a corner booth well out of the way, not that it seems there are too many here tonight, the ambiance certainly isn't hurting anything. It's cold, and the rain is still coming down, but the interior of the bar is dry, sheltered just on the edge of the beach, the scent of beer and lime, chili and coconut, mingling with the sharper fragrance of salt and sand as a soft breeze comes in over the ocean to whisper through the palms.

Jack is...well, comfortable might be an understatement. Moira has never been much bothered by the cold, but the taller woman isn't adverse to their current level of nearness, either, which suits her just fine. Settled on the wooden bench beside the geneticist, with one knee hooked over the other's thigh and one of those long arms draped comfortably around her shoulders, she's both pleasantly _near_ and pleasantly _warm_ in a stolen black sweater too large for her, the sleeves rolled up several times to meet her wrists. 

It still smells good, fragrant with burnt amber and bergamot beneath that of fabric softener and rain. There's a distinct possibility that Moira won't be getting it back. It isn't hurting _at all_ , that on occasion, that arm draws her a little more snugly near or that on the last time, a light kiss was placed atop her head. It's left her a little smug, in fact, dark eyes glittering fondly when she looks up at the taller woman and sees a faint upturn to the corner of the other's lips. Every time it happens, it makes her fingertips feel a little warm. 

Every time it happens, Sombra's expression turns both interested and delighted, as if the hacker were observing a mythical creature or local cryptid in the wild. 

It's good. It's very good, and she's very comfortable, and there's a non-zero chance that between the pervasive warmth of the lanky frame she's sidled up against and the warmth of the mezcal after every sip, that sleep comes to her before it doesn't, encouraged by the soft pattering of the rain on the roof overhead. 

"What is on that?" comes a low lilt near her ear as she lifts another small section of mango, sticky and golden-orange, to her lips. The crust of spices on the edge of it is a striking contrast to the sweet flesh of the fruit, cut with a hint of lime and salt. 

Chewing slowly to savor the taste, Jack casts a thoughtful glance over Moira's countenance in the warm glow of their secluded corner table. There's a look of vague, but almost clinical curiosity on the taller woman's countenance as Moira extinguishes a menthol cigarette in the nearby ashtray, electing not to light another at a somewhat pointed look from Olivia. 

Those vividly mismatched eyes are a bit darker than usual in the dim illumination, but the freckles are all the more evident, constellations that cast over the bridge of the other's nose and chase sharp cheekbones. Her gaze lingers perhaps a second too long on the curve of the other woman's lips before she selects another small section of mango, liting it and seeing a flicker of consideration on that sharp visage at the offering.

"Lime," Jack muses for the geneticist's benefit, hearing the thoughtful hum that escapes the other and feeling the subtle vibration of it at her side. "Chiles. Some kind of salt, I think. It's not all that spicy."

There's a pronounced arch to one ginger brow at the mention of spice, but an angular countenance draws a scarce measure nearer, an instant of warmth felt when Moira accepts the offered fruit and then chews in silent contemplation. A thoughtful hum sounds from the taller woman at that, but nothing is said until the whole of the mango has been consumed. 

"It's adequate," Moira drawls out in a smooth, low lilt, a voice that is all amber alcohol and coils of warm, mint-laced smoke. A quiet sound of amusement made afterwards, mismatched eyes flick toward her wrist as the taller woman indicates, "I would thank you not to get that on my sweater, Jacqueline."

Brows knitting subtly at the observation, Jack flicks a glance in the same direction, dark eyes only just catching the bit of mango juice that's trailed down her wrist toward the cuff of the sweater. She's quick to lick it off, then wipes her hands carefully with a napkin for good measure. 

With a vague amusement, the Junker tips her head back, resting it to the lean shoulder behind her as she confides, "Mangos are messy, babe."

"Mm," comes a noncommittal response, neither affirming nor denying the sentiment. It's followed by a light kiss, any issue she may have taken with it evaporating with a simple gesture. 

Across from them in the booth, Reyes still looks a bit sore, though more comfortable in his maroon hoodie and jeans than she imagines he must be in his combat armor - or at least hopes. His ash-brown complexion hasn't drawn that much attention, both the establishment and regulars alike all too willing to overlook what is clearly not their business, much more after Olivia slipped them extra credits with their order.

While he's avoiding the mezcal and tequila at Moira's instruction, he is putting away bar snacks at current as if his life depended upon it. Notwithstanding that she alone has caught him sneaking sips of Liv's beer at least a few times, but hell. That's none of her business. They're old friends, and she already eats enough training mat in their normal exercises in Rialto without risking any more, that's for certain. 

They've been playing a game for the last hour or so of Olivia's devising, the hacker all but sprawled across Reyes's lap and into Widow's, ombre-haired head propped on the arm that the Frenchwoman _isn't_ using to hold a single glass of the establishment's finest red wine. Given that every sip is accompanied by a flicker of disdain, a scarce tightening at the corners of shimmering golden eyes and the faint wrinkling of the other's nose, she can't help but to think it must not be very good.

She did ask once, how it was. The answer had been a succinct _Pas Francais_.  
** Not French

"Okay. Okay, okay. Next question," Liv draws attention back to the round at hand, an erstwhile drinking game that all have participated in and seems to have no distinct methodology. Gesturing with the words to almost jostle Widow's arm, which causes the sniper to shift subtly in the seat and utter a soft _cherie_ , the hacker posits, "You have one free pass to sleep with anyone, consequence free. Who would you pick?"

At the pointing of a lilac-tinted nail at their resident medic, there's a minute twitch to the corner of Moira's lips, a low and thoughtful hum that fills the silence for the brief moment between the question being asked and the other woman lifting a glass of burnished amber whiskey to take a slow swallow. Exhaling with a certain satisfaction afterwards, the geneticist signals to one of the nearby servers, presumably for a refill, before even broaching the topic. 

It's no secret that Moira is contemplating the question, however. It's something trackable in the minute twitch to the corner of the other woman's lips, and the firm, warm pressure of those long fingers when they brush her upper arm, the thumb stroking there thoughtfully before Moira confides conversationally, as if discussing the weather, "Satya Vaswani."

There was a time, perhaps, even a time not that long past, that that might have rankled her. That it would have edged under her skin and rifled around like the flat edge of a scavver's knife, leaving scars and a mess behind. But their conversations of late have been long, thoughtful, full of things that she hadn't anticipated they would be. And to Jack's estimation, she has very little to worry about. 

Nonetheless, she emits a soft huff, little more than a puff of breath that stirs in the ginger strands near Moira's ear, her chin settling atop the other's shoulder and dark eyes falling half-lid. The corner of her lips curling into a mischievous smile, the Junker teases in a smooth cadence, "You're on thin fucking ice, O'Deorain."

A throaty chuckle is her reward, one that is accompanied by a bright look in heterochromatic eyes, their scarlet and blue inquisitive, rapt to hers of a sudden. The sharp contours of an angular countenance tilt a little nearer, and it's all she can do not to count the smattering of freckles there now that they're in more direct light.

Washed of its pomade and product from the rain, the subsequent shower on the transport that followed their mission, Moira's ginger hair is falling into those mismatched eyes in a way that shouldn't be as attractive as it is. Tomboyish, even. She has a desperate desire to touch it, feels her fingers twitch despite herself. 

"Am I?" that low and lilting voice drops a touch further, becomes a husky whisper that finds its match in an _unnecessarily_ confident expression, the cockiness of a smirk at the corner of thin lips as the other woman asks of her, "And is there nothing I could do to remedy that situation, _a rúnsearc_."

And is that ever a one-two punch. A _mothers hide your daughters_ moment, even, as that lanky frame eases forward ever-so-slightly further. Jack is fairly certain she can feel her pulse in her fingertips, isn't sure how they find the other woman's sternum to prevent that _devil of a woman_ from wholly closing the distance between them. Even though she wants her to. Badly. A little too badly for public drinks, she muses, second-guessing the amount of mezcal she's imbibed for the first time this evening. 

Scrunching her nose faintly, yet unable to mask the mischievous curl to the corner of her own lips, Jack murmurs back amusedly, "Don't you sweet-talk me, you lanky fuck."

The low and thoughtful hum that resonates from Moira's chest at that is one that she can _feel_ beneath her fingertips, and the other's shirt, little more than black cotton t-shirt, seems too thin of a sudden, too little a barrier between them with the taller woman watching her _like that_. And hell, if she isn't half-tempted to drag her into the restroom _right now_. It hasn't gone unnoticed. Heterochromatic gaze dip toward where her fingertips brace against a sternum, then look up back up, this time from behind coppery lashes, and that's _unfair_.

God, if Moira isn't intimately aware of that. The smile on the taller woman's countenance is all masked teeth, hidden away behind a cool exterior to be witnessed in only a hint of ivory and a smooth translation into a self-congratulatory smirk. 

" _Trí na chéile a thógtar na cáisléain_ ," Moira in that low lilt, in that voice like the waves of a green sea crashing upon the rocks and scattering to foam. The corner of the other's lips curls further, sure of itself as the taller woman asks in a softer timbre, speaking just to her, "Is it not working, _cuisle mo chroidhe_?"  
** In our togetherness, castles are built//vein of my heart

Yes. Yes, it is. That's the short answer. That's the problem, is the longer one, the one written in the hint of dusky rose that's risen to her ears and along her cheekbones, the way she licks her lips slowly, thoughtfully before even trying to formulate a spoken answer. For all the chill of the ocean breeze in the wake of the rain, she feels _altogether too warm_ of a sudden as a secondary, contemplative hum emanates from the lanky frame before her. 

Dark eyes flick from mismatched to the taller woman's throat, to the collarbone, to where her fingertips press still against soft, black fabric. To anywhere _but_ that scarlet and blue gaze, because she feels decidedly off-kilter at the moment and it's definitely not just the alcohol now, more than mere proximity.

The low chuckle that resonates afterwards _is not helping_.

The peanut that strikes off the side of Moira's neck, however, does. It surprises both of them, makes Jack jump a bit and the taller woman's hand jerk sharply up to the side of the throat where it has hit, mismatched eyes flicking instantaneously at the culprit - Gabriel. Pale fingertips touching the little red welt left behind, the geneticist merely arches a brow at him as if in question.

He gestures between them, appearing all too amused with himself as he cracks open another peanut shell, this time to toss back the shucked peanut within instead of flicking it across the table at them. With a raspy amusement, Reyes asserts, "Either leave her alone or take it to your room. Like watching a fuckin' fox play with a hare, I swear."

A soft scoff follows that particular statement, the taller woman showing zero inclination to _sink back_ , and Jack full of certainty that if the other _moves forward_ , the fingertips she's curled in the front of Moira's shirt without realizing it will be the least of their fucking problems. Her mind is still running a circle around itself when Moira starts to ask Gabriel, "And pray tell, who would you sel-"

"Babe." 

It's all Jack intones in that moment, an abrupt interruption that draws that mismatched gaze back to her with a certain intensity. 

At the arch of a brow, an unasked question, a patient inquiry of what she wants without so much as ever _speaking_ a word, the Junker holds a stare of scarlet and blue, her own darker, not straying as she licks her lower lip to moisten it. Like that would make the words easier to speak.

Releasing the front of the taller woman's shirt carefully, which requires all of her concentration for that moment, the Junker then holds up two tattooed fingers in an indicative gesture, and, certain that she has the other's attention from the way scarlet and blue eyes have yet to leave hers, asserts, "The second one."

"The second-," it in fact, takes a few seconds for the implication of her words to sink in, realization dawning in slow increments upon the medic's countenance. It may be read in the subtle shift of expression, the widening of mismatched eyes, but it's heard in the husky chuckle that follows, low in timbre as it sends an involuntary thrill through her, as if a current of electricity crackled just beneath the skin. "Ah."

Her gaze doesn't shift, pointedly. 

Moira's does, if only to turn back toward the table and it's recently refreshed tumbler of whiskey. With a certain ease of movement, practiced as ever, the taller woman lifts the beverage and - in a show of skill that would put a Junker with moonshine to shame - tilts it back in a series of smooth swallows before settling the newly emptied vessel back atop the table with a soft 'click'. 

A credit chip is tossed beside it thereafter, if with a slightly louder clatter, to pay for their rounds thus far. And then that impossibly tall silhouette uncoils from the booth with a low, "Good evening," to the other side of the table. 

To her credit, Jack simply climbs over the back of the booth and leaps down, landing easily on her scuffed combat boots and skirting around the table to accept the arm outstretched for her. It's hard not to feel a little warm at the fingertips when it settles comfortably around her shoulders, used to steer her the front of the bar. 

Mouth agape in a look of abject wonder, Olivia is clearly delighted, as if the last few minutes had included the early arrival of Christmas amongst them.

Reyes, however, is the one who breaks the silence. Hands cupped around his mouth, he calls after, "Hey. What if I was going to say you?"

That elicits another husky chuckle from the woman at her side, who retorts succinctly, "I would say that you are a day late and a pound short, Gabriel."

Not turning around, she lifts the arm that's not at current slung around the taller woman's waist, and raises a tattooed middle finger in his direction.

\---

When Jacqueline Vargas awakens late in the night, it is alone, dark hair splayed over the soft, white pillows, a cool breeze drifting through the curtains to carry with it the scent of rain in the palms. It takes her a moment to piece it all back together, their low laughter in the evening, her hand in Moira's back pocket on the slow walk along the beachside road toward their hotel. The mingling of mezcal and whiskey, the one on her lips and the one on the other's as they fumbled with the keycard in the door.

Her dark eyes fall half-lid at the thought, and she searches the room without moving, tracing hazy outlines in the night until she finds the one that she wants. The silhouette that lingers on the balcony, visible when the wind parts the curtains, the soft glow of a lit ember at the end of a cigarette held in one slender hand. 

The air holds a little bit of a chill, the scent of ozone, and gooseflesh prickles over her coppery skin as she turns back the duvet, bare feet finding the floor to pick around the clothes scattered there. The sliding door is ajar, though the curtains are drawn over, a gentle breeze whispering through the palm leaves as the trees sway outside, dappled with rain. She can see the beach below from their second floor balcony, pristinely white and seeming to glisten as it stretches as far along the coast as she can see, towards Dorado to the south and an unknown city to the north, the lights of some far-off port distant on the shoreline. 

An armchair has been drawn outside and Moira rests there as if it were a throne, leaned indolently back with mismatched eyes cast at a distant point on the horizon. A cigarette smolders in one hand, held between violet-tinged knuckles to contrast the salt air with a hint of mint-laced smoke, the promise of fire. Ginger hair disheveled and falling into the eyes, tinging them a darker hue of sapphire and merlot than typical, the taller woman draws another slow drag from the end of the cigarette, exhaling a cloud of silver-white smoke into the Castillo night. 

All bare coppery skin and tattoos to the waist, arms wrapped around her chest for a semblance of warmth, Jack cannot help but shiver at the shift in temperature as she steps out onto the balcony. She is - after all - absent her borrowed sweater, which found itself in a wrinkled heap on the floor somewhere in the vicinity of the door not long after their arrival. 

Moira, at the very least, has had the good sense to slip back into some semblance of attire for the out-of-doors. That silk shirt is wrinkled and unbuttoned nearly to the navel, and the loops of the trousers are absent their belt, but it is clothing all the same. When mismatched eyes catch hers, flick down and then back up, coppery lashes are illumined by the ember of the cigarette as the other takes a slow drag from it, then exhales a coil of silver-blue smoke in the late evening. 

The precise flick of ash from the end of it is accompanied by the movement of Moira's free hand, an indication that she's wanted nearer as it pats lightly atop a long thigh once, then twice, and the taller woman sits back in the chair a touch further, not saying a word. As if certain that the silent request will be accommodated.

Of course it is.

Her arm comes to drape around the taller woman's shoulders as she obliges, fingertips finding the coppery hair at Moira's nape. The other woman is pleasantly warm through the amber and turquoise of that silk shirt, through neatly-creased trousers, as the Junker settles comfortably in her lap. A long arm comes around her waist to draw her minutely more snug to the geneticist's side, while the other retains careful control of the cigarette, one last puff taken, one last draconic exhalation of silvery smoke from the nostrils before it's ground out in a nearby ashtray. The remnants of a few others ground out amidst the ash do not go unnoticed.

"Can't sleep?" is all she asks, dark eyes slipping from the sea - which seems endless on the horizon - to those freckled features, cast with a hint of wheaten gold from the light within their hotel room and shrouded at the opposite side from the overcast sky.

Her only response comes in the form of a sound that is either contented or noncommittal, uttered at the line of her temple in the aftermath of a light kiss there, one that carries with it the scent of smoke. She cannot tell for certain, but a low and thoughtful, "Mm," reverberates through that lanky frame nonetheless. 

She reciprocates with a kiss to the column of the other woman's throat, the skin slightly cold beneath her lips and still carrying the fragrance of the other's cologne. Then another, and she can almost taste it, subtly smoky on her palate from her nearness to the pulse-point. It elicits a second low sound, much similar to the first, before Moira confides in a low lilt, "I could not, no."

"Maybe I can help," is what she intimates against the corner of the taller woman's jaw, lips curling up faintly before she leverages a soft nip to the skin instead of another kiss. With the half-beat of a laugh, her voice containing a certain mirth, Jack confides there, "Read you a bedtime story, babe? I know a good one about _the little Junker that could_."

When a hand lifts as if to catch her, Jack catches it by the wrist instead; it's slender and warm, the pulse beneath frenetic as a hummingbird's wings as her fingertips curl around to hold it. Under any other circumstance, she might consider it to be nerves, a swift adrenaline reaction. But this is Moira, and those mismatched eyes are dark, half-shrouded beneath coppery lashes and fixed on her. 

Her fingertips slide from the wrist at that look and slender fingers catch her by the jaw in turn, slip lower to press to the pulse-point, mirror her action. Moira's hands are firm as marble and cool to the touch, speak of a lifetime of deft, precise ministrations. They demand her full attention. They have it, irrevocably and undeniably, like the shimmering surface of the sea holds the attention of one thrown overboard and tossed beneath the waves. 

That grasp tightens subtly, draws her slowly forward and off-balance, and Moira's angular countenance ducks in so near that their temples touch and she can feel the warmth of the low exhalation, tinged with whiskey and smoke, that breathes against her cheek. That voice is lower when the other speaks, a little huskier than anything as it confides, "You are being a _dreadful brat_ this evening, Jacqueline."

"I know."

She knows what she's doing. As certainly as she knows that's the _wrong_ answer and the right one all at once. It's written all over that sharp countenance in the dim illumination, in the sudden silence, nothing but the soft sound of the rain whispering in the palm trees and the distance hush of waves on white sand. 

"I've half a mind..." and that voice has shifted in timbre, speaks of control, harbors a dark current that reminds her of a black river shifting amidst stony banks. The pad of the other's thumb shifts, presses into her lower lip, and she doesn't need to think to know that her pulse is picking up against the overlong fingers curled beneath her jaw. "To take you back in there and-"

That sentence never quite concludes, because she halts it with the warm brush of her lips to the other's. A kiss that lingers briefly before it deepens, that turns a hand at her jaw to two at her back, sliding slowly up the coppery skin in tandem. One that's kept slow as it's reciprocated, builds to make the taller woman lean forward to chase her, emit a low sound that emanates from the chest when it ends.

She catches Moira's lower lip lightly between her teeth at the terminus, only _just_ gently enough not to break the skin, and watches the shift in those mismatched eyes before she lets go. Pupils dilate subtly, colours darken further, all oceanic blue and bloodied merlot behind the red-gold of coppery lashes. 

It reminds her of something she read once. That when a fox hears a rabbit scream, it comes running _but not to help_.

But Jack's never been good at _not_ pressing her luck, and she knows what she's about. So when she brushes her nose lightly to the taller woman's and asks in a soft cadence, her dark eyes don't break that gaze with the whisper, "Why do you think I'm doing it?"

A certain satisfaction lives in her when Moira's tongue swipes slowly over the curve of a lower lip as if to check for blood, finding none. And that's really all the incentive that Moira _needs_ , because the hands that have found her hips pull forward, draw her back flush. When they're so close that their lips almost brush again, sharing the same breath, those heterochromatic eyes search hers and a slow exhalation is heard in the silence between them, one that carries with it a certain anticipation. 

And then the other intones in a low timbre, one that reminds her of wolves prowling in the Irish moors, all teeth and glinting eyes in the night, " _Ba mhaith liom tú ar do ghlúine_."

Jack doesn't know what that means, but the way that it's said sends an involuntary thrill through her, leaves gooseflesh along her coppery skin. And there's an instant, one that passes so quickly that it could be missed, in which her breath hitches softly when the other woman ducks nearer. 

Maybe they should come to Mexico more often. 

It's a flashfire reaction, blackpowder and kerosene, that makes her blood feel like it's on fire the closer the taller woman draws. Those sharp features tilt subtly, turn inward to speak it into her ear, as if it were a confession, a promise, an oath.

The intonation is husky, all whiskey and smoke and the memory of things that live in the fire, as Moira asserts, "I want you on your _knees_ , _a rúnsearc_." 

Her fingertips curl slightly at the nape of the taller woman's neck.

She can do that.

God, can she do that.

It's found in the slow sinking back, the long seconds in which they merely look at one another, heterochromatic and dark eyes alike full of the knowledge of their descent. In the way her fingertips drift down the sternum, taking their time. The way they trace their way to the navel to find the last few buttons of that wrinkled silk shirt, reveal the milky white skin beneath once they've been tended to. The shift of slim hips under her touch when they shift lower still to unfasten neatly-pressed trousers, slide beneath the waistband only just so, only just so. 

"Jacqueline," it's all that's said, but that low lilt is breathier than it isn't.

"I know," is all she responds with, her cadence soft as she brushes her nose lightly to a freckled one, watches coppery lashes flutter as her fingertips slip lower and find a wet warmth awaiting them. Hears the breath hitch at that, a low sound made near the corner of her lips as the taller woman leans into her. 

" _Jacqueline_ ," it's lower now, more insistent. 

It's found in her slow shift away from the other woman, the withdrawal of that touch so that she can sink back, find the floor beneath them. So that her fingertips can chase down those long thighs, all lean musculature firm beneath the fabric, as she settles between them. Once the trousers have been dealt with, she takes the time to place a sole, tentative kiss, feather-light to the inside of the other's knee. Another, slightly further up, and then her dark eyes flick upward, meet mismatched in the dim illumination. 

It's found in the gentle tracery of a cool fingertip to her coppery skin, how it lifts to slide a strand of dark hair behind her ear, then traces the shell of it, how it ghosts along the line of her jaw to cease at her chin and tilt it up. The way it brushes over the curve of her lower lip, slowly, tender, and she turns her head to bestow a light kiss to it before it's gone. 

It's found in the slow coiling of those fingers into her hair and the subtle pull forward, the look in those heterochromatic eyes in the dim light. And soon it's found in smaller things. In the plum-coloured mark she leaves behind on the inside of a milky white thigh. In another. And another, and the way that she continues until the sound of breathing above her goes _hard_ of a sudden, uneven and shaky around the edges, the musculature _tense_ beneath another teasing kiss.

Moira won't beg, never does.

Never has to.

But whatever just escaped between the taller woman's teeth is undeniably vulgar, low lilt husky in native Gaeilge, and well...that tells her _well enough_ where the other is right now, and she can feel the trembling tension beneath her touch, and that's enough. It's enough. The sound of relief when she finds her mark is _audible_ above the rain in the palm trees and the waves on the shore, a low resonation that she feels where she is as much as she hears.

When Jack hums her response to that, a pleasant vibration, that taloned grip goes all the tighter in her hair, draws her closer in a way that makes her want to do it again - to elicit a sudden, sharper reaction. So she does, knows intimately the way those low and pleasant sensations coil low in the other, already threatening to break over. And knowing that, she takes it slow. Draws it out in the way that the riotous clouds overhead keep threatening to break but never do, an ebb and flow to narrow hips, a sliding of two tattooed fingers just so.

When Moira comes undone, it's somewhere between the murmur of Gaeilge above her and the distant rumbling of thunder across the ocean, trembling the windowpanes as the rain starts to patter down. It's somewhere between a shuddering breath and a husky moan, the hand in her hair pulling her forward and keeping her there through it, only relinquished when the other's head has fallen to the back of the chair.

It's the second time that does the taller woman in, the wind howling over the sea and the palm trees creaking dangerously beyond the balcony at the low, desperate sound of her name. It's followed by the guttural intonation of a word in Gaeilge she's never heard before, leaves that tall, lanky frame more than a little breathless, the chest shaking with every exhalation, the mismatched eyes dark and a touch incredulous when she sinks back a measure to meet them. She can see where the talons of one hand have bitten into the armrest as if for purchase, the silk shirt indecently open, the wide strokes of pink that colour the skin there. 

She could live her entire life and not tire of it.

When she shifts back on her heels, it's only to rise, to find her place settled back into Moira's lap once more as the rain hammers down beyond the balcony. Long arms drape around her waist, and she wraps her own around the taller woman's neck in turn, turns her countenance into it for a minute, presses a warm kiss there as she waits for the other's heartbeat to slow, the breath to steady in slow increments. 

It's strange, treating this woman as if she were made of glass. The feather-light brush of her lips beneath the line of a sharp jaw, feeling the thrum of the pulse beneath it. The slow stroking of her thumbs along the cheekbones as she cradles the other woman's head for the time being, keeps her close. 

She would have balked at this idea once. Insisted that she was metal and kerosene, shrapnel littering the Australian Outback; too sharp and caustic a thing to be _soft_ in this way. Cradling that sharply angled countenance to her chest, fingertips sliding into a mess of disheveled ginger hair, she knows that's a lie. This is soft, but it's _good_. There is a part of her that will always want to be here, feeling the warmth of a slow exhalation, a shaky sigh against her collarbone, in the space between the highs and the lows. 

Coppery hair glitters between her tattooed fingers as she strokes like it, a bolt of lightning arcing through the sky. The illumination turns the colour brighter for a flickering instant, vividly red and gold like a struck match, a new flame. She tucks her head to it, inhales slowly.

"I love you," is what she whispers on the exhalation, breath stirring in ginger hair as a storm howls home on the white sand shores below. 

\---

The sun is what wakes her, glittering and warm where it reaches through the open curtains to sprawl over the duvet, leaving swathes of amber painted over coppery limbs and the paler ones threaded through them alike. One such around her is tinged with lavender, pallid shades that take on a duskier, blue tint at the articulation of the joints. Dark eyes only just open and chocolate-coloured in the light, the Junker traces a line of metal down that forearm with her fingertip, ever-so-lightly so as not to wake the woman behind her. 

She doesn't anticipate the flinch that occurs beneath her touch, perhaps would think more of it if the arm around her didn't pull her closer, didn't come accompanied by a huff of warm breath to the back of her neck as Moira stirs subtly, murmurs behind her ear, " _Maidin mhaith_."  
** Good morning

She turns in that embrace, just enough to shift upwards, to place a feather-light kiss to the corner of the other's lips and see the faint upturn to the corner of them at that. There's a low, thoughtful hum after a moment, and - mismatched eyes still closed - the taller woman tucks a head over her own before settling back in.

"Morning," is what Jack answers with a soft amusement, her voice yet thick from sleep and the accent prominent. Stretching like a cat, she nestles back into the taller woman, eye-level with the column of the other's neck. Her fingertips find the soft dappling of colour there, brush over hints of not-quite-faded plum and red with a dim fascination.

"Cease," sounds in Moira's distinctive lilt, a low directive that's chased by a yawn. She feels it as much as hears it from where she is. 

"Got you good," she answers with a vague curiosity, the soft click of her tongue following after, though she doesn't comply with the request. 

"Jacqueline," comes next, that lilting timbre a little lower, harboring a note of warning. 

"Moira," Jack answers back, not heeding it as her thumb traces the outline of a particularly prominent mark near the collarbone. 

Another huff of air, this time into her hair to stir the dark strands of it, a mere instant before that tall frame cranes back enough that Moira can look at her. Mismatched eyes vivid in the light, brightening their scarlet and blue when they catch it and forcing the taller woman to squint, Moira emits a sound that middles between a third huff and a scoff, long fingers curling around her wrist to halt her as the other asserts, "You're being an imp."

"Never," she murmurs with a slow, mischievous smile, leaning forward to peck the end of a freckled nose. 

What follows is the tilt of that copper-crowned head, a pair of mismatched eyes that settle heavily on her before the duvet is wrapped around her her like a cocoon, long arms curving around it to hold her quite securely where she is, unable to move much without effort. The half-beat of a laugh sounds from her at that, warm against the side of the other's neck. 

"Go back to sleep," is all the taller woman intones at that. As if knowing what she's thinking, there's a distinct pause before Moira clarifies for good measure, sounding quite serious, "If you bite me, Jacqueline, I will put you on the floor."

The half-beat of a laugh sounds from her, but she settles back in nonetheless, not in a mood to protest. Uncharacteristic, it isn't long before she hears the taller woman's breathing shallow once more, sleep coming quickly for once. 

Perhaps someday, Jack will put it together. Will look back at this moment, languid and drowsy in the early morning light, as the first of many warning signs. Will put together with her mechanic's mind the little things. The flinch. The markings that should be gone. The weariness. And realize it for what it is, undiverted. Insidious. An indication, as the other woman drifts back into a dreamless sleep, that something was wrong even _then_. 

That if she had been looking, she might have noticed. 

\----

Breakfast, though certainly closer to lunch than it isn't, turns out to be a simple affair, finds them back in Calaveras, the little bar across the street from their hotel. It does, however, only occur after the seventh message that they both missed from Olivia to the tune of _Where are you?_ , and a moment of intensely loud knocking from Reyes at the door that triggered her fight or flight reflex from its manner. The man knocks like military police. 

The bar itself has a slightly different aura in the late morning, the same crisp salt air coming in over the ocean, the same worn tables and chairs, but a different clientele. It's a sharp juxtaposition and one that she loves. Around tables that Liv is even now flitting to and from, engaging in friendly banter, boldly tattooed members of the Los Muertos huddle around platters of pan dulce, fried eggs, tortillas, and black coffee, intermingled with a host of local families doing _just the same_.

It reminds her in some respects of Junkertown, sitting in Wolf Woods amidst a motley assortment. Queensguard and mecha mechanics, scavvers and solar farmers, oddly making the surroundings easy in a way that she hadn't anticipated. 

And in a corner booth, sheltered in the most tactical position that could be found in the event of trouble, Talon's own strike team. Widowmaker, poised and elegant even in a _dive bar_ , on perhaps her third mimosa, her brilliantly golden eyes shrouded by overlarge sunglasses. A napkin with bits of sugar shell on it, picked off their platter of pan dulce, no doubt by Sombra. Moira with a pot of black coffee already secured, moving to slowly settle into the booth beside the sniper an pour out a mug. 

Reyes, as usual, giving her shit at too early an hour, his voice gruff as they walk toward the booth themselves, "Can't believe you boxed up in the doorway like that. The fuck were you expecting?"

"You knock like a cop," Jack answers with a soft grunt, moving to drop into the seat beside Moira and leaning across the table to select a piece of sweet bread. She bites through the sugar-coated exterior with a sharp crunch, chewing slowly. It tastes a bit of almond, mostly of sugar. She might eat two. 

Reyes settles across from them in the booth, shifting the table a little to the sound of wood scraping on wood and a hard look from Widow for the noise. She wonders briefly if Widow is hungover. If Widow _can get_ hungover. 

"You're like one of those little dogs that think they're pitbulls. Junkyard Pomeranian," Reyes asserts, piling a few eggs atop the beans already on his tortilla and adding various other sundries until it's to his liking. Taking a bite, he chews as he claims further, "Pocket Doberman."

Taking the opportunity to pull Moira's coffee over closer, Jack catches a whiff of faintly burnt-smelling steam as she steals a sip from the beverage, pulling an impressive face afterwards. It's _strong_ and more than a little burnt. She doesn't relinquish it, though cracks the knuckles of her free hand as she makes eye contact with the man across the table, asking, "You want to scrap, old man?"

There's a low sound near the shell of her ear, a peck placed to it before Moira requests simply, "Cease."

The taller woman still _looks_ tired, and it softens something in her chest a little. As a long arm drapes around her shoulders, it's accompanied by the sliding of fingertips between her own on the hot ceramic of the mug, reasserting possession of it as the other informs her lowly, "And that isn't _yours_ , is it?"

She relinquishes it this time, to the soft sound of ceramic on wood as the other woman slides it closer. 

"Depends, kid," Gabe retorts then, motioning a thumb out toward the beach. "How much sand are you looking to eat today?"

When he reaches for the pitcher of mimosas at the centre of the table, it doesn't escape either of their attention that his other arm never quite leaves its place wrapped around his ribs, still bracing them. He isn't one hundred percent from yesterday. She can't imagine that he would be. 

Mismatched eyes flick in his direction at that, Moira's voice holding a warning note as the taller woman intones simply, "Gabriel. That isn't in your best interest, is it?"

The queen of rhetorical questions today.

He grunts, but similarly concedes. Opts instead to pour himself out a glass of water and wash his breakfast down with sips of that. 

Near as they are, Jack has a front-row view of the faint smirk that turns the corner of the other's lips. Must be focused on it, as the next she knows there's the arch of a perfect brow and the low inquiry of, "Jacqueline?"

" _Jacqueline_ ," is all Jack says to that, a soft snort sounding from her as she relinquishes the mug. Tattooed fingers, still a little warm from where they curved around the coffee cup, reach up then, gently push coppery hair back from the pale countenance it's falling into. It harbours hints of red-gold around the ends where it catches the light of the sun, reminds her in some ways of a living flame. 

Her touch lingers longer than it should, ends in the trailing of her knuckle along an angular jawline. There's a hint of dusty rose beneath the other's freckles, brushed along upswept cheekbones, and she has to wonder if it's from the faint chill still in the air or fondness. Probably the latter. 

Sliding her fingertips over the warm exterior of the coffee mug, she wonders. It's something to do with her hands other than touch Moira, which is what she _wants_ to do at the moment, but probably shouldn't with the hint of colour already on those sharp features. She has no idea if it will be relinquished to her.

But a perfect brow arches, albeit in seeming disapproval, and it is.

"That is not prudent," Moira observes candidly, scarlet and blue eyes studying her for an instant, though their resident medic never quite makes an attempt to _stop_ her, either. Merely watches with a sort of intent scrutiny, as if attempting to pick the action aart, dissect it on the proverbial lab table of their morning. 

"Mm. It isn't _prudent_ to climb into bed with Talon, either, and been there, done that," comes her response, the wink of a dark eye mischievously in the medic's direction. The corner of her lips curls up at that, a pleased smile offered over the rim of the coffee mug as she takes a slow, pointed sip from it. 

"She's got you there," Reyes muses with a raspy mirth, earning a narrow-eyed look from Moira for his efforts. He chuckles again, the sound hitching a little as it pulls at his ribs. The pain does nothing to dim his grin. "Literally and figuratively, even.

"Gabriel," Moira states.

The enunciation of his name speaks volumes.

"Bet it's like fuckin' a daddy longlegs," Gabriel adds with no less hesitation and an even bigger grin, taking another sip of his water before sliding it back onto the table.

" _Gabriel_ ," there's a sharper note to Moira's voice, though it's unclear yet whether it holds more exasperation or amusement for his comment. A scoff heard afterwards, the medic inquires, "Are you finished?"

He snorts at that, asserts, "No. The-Little-Junker-That-Could might want to be, though, if you want to have _any_ coffee this morning."

Her response to his calling-out is another slow sip of stolen and decidedly bitter coffee, not looking at him as she volleys one of the previous evening's peanuts across the table to hit him in the shoulder. When she does look at him, it's to wink, dark eyes alight with mirth. 

"Jacqueline."

"Mm?"

When she turns back to look at Moira, she finds herself well occupied with a soft brush of lips to her own. A slow kiss, one that she didn't see coming but certainly isn't complaining about, one that tenderly lingers in a way that makes the earth tilt on its axis. Moira tastes like coffee and a little of mint, a hint that stays with her like the warmth in her fingertips, like the faint tingling at her lips well after Moira has used the distraction to reacquire the mug from her once more. 

That's fine. This is fine. It takes a considerable amount of her willpower to refrain from catching the Irishwoman by the front of the shirt and pulling her back over, after. Her dark eyes don't shift from where they've landed. Not at first. Not for long enough that she sees the faint smirk at the corner of the other woman's mouth when it curls there, how the rim of the mug rises to the curve of those lips for a slow swallow of black coffee.

There's a thoughtful hum from Moira afterwards, scarlet and blue eyes falling to hers as she starts to piece her thoughts back together again. 

"Olivia," the taller woman muses idly as Sombra throttles into the booth beside Gabe, jarring the table again slightly. 

" _You_ never answered my question _anoche_ ," Liv laments from the other side of the booth, leaning over it to flick her on the arm, before stealing another bit of pan dulce from the tray and meticulously starting to peel the sugar off it for consumption.  
** last night

Fingertips finding the collar of Moira's shirt, Jack brushes a coppery eyelash from it, smooths the fabric over the collarbone once more. There's a glint of gold there, the fine chain of a familiar necklace that she only just notices as it drapes over freckled skin. She draws it slowly from beneath the soft fabric, filaments of gold stark against her coppery fingertips, until they find the small fossil in its drop of amber at the terminus - the firefly in stone warm from where it rested beneath the vestment and the other's skin. 

"Maybe Widow," Jack muses smoothly, turning the amber betwixt her fingertips to better catch the light, draw out more detail in the insect housed within it. Dark eyes rapt on the molten stone, the Junker clicks her tongue lightly off the roof of her mouth, "It's like half the accent and half that I think she could kill me with her bare hands. No offense, Wid."

" _Aucune prise_ ," is the sniper's retort, and while she doesn't understand a fucking _word_ of what the other just said, it's not difficult to put together from context.   
** None taken

Another low hum sounds from Moira at that, and Jack can feel more than _see_ the subtle shift in the way the other's arm comes to rest around her shoulders, the inquisitive cant of the head as Moira watches her inspect the bit of jewelry with an unreadable expression. As if this were somehow scratching the surface of something best left be. Left alone for now. So she tucks it back beneath the collar of the other's shirt, straightens the chain with a fingertip, and smooths the fabric over once more. 

"You still have that?" Gabe asks in surprise, his voice no less raspy around the edges. "Isn't that from..."

"Quite. It's sentimental," there's a slow measuring of what word to utilize there, Moira leaning back in her seat subtly, expression cool, calm in a way that suddenly seems calculated. The seamless transition from one thing to the next doesn't go unnoticed, "Lacroix? Olivia? Had you intended to indulge us in the game that _you_ initiated and apparently had me _on thin ice_?"

" _Mira_ ," Sombra starts to say, gesturing vaguely at them both with a cheeky smile and a wicked glint in violet-blue eyes. "I've been a little enraptured with your whole...PDA _situación_. The ice wasn't _that_ thin."

"Quaint, from the woman who once utilized me as a pillow because she forgot her _stuffed bear_ in Rialto," Moira drawls out lowly in return, a brow arched as mismatched eyes meet the hacker's own. Coffee mug settling on the table with a soft _click_ , the taller woman offers a pointed look at her sidelong before she can even reach for it. 

She wrinkles her nose faintly, but doesn't take it. 

Sombra, to her credit, coughs aloud at the call-out, a hint of colour evident at the tips of her ears where they're visible through a mess of ombre hair. 

Readily changing the topic, likely as the medic had intended fully in the first place, the hacker takes a loud sip through the straw of Widow's mimosa before answering cheekily, "Maybe I'll just steal your girl, _bruja_. Then I won't need _Arturito_ at all."

"Hope your Spanish isn't rusty, _cariño_ ," and now those violet-blue eyes are being batted at her, that smile impish. 

" _¿No te gustaría saber?_ " Jack answers smoothly, not missing a beat.   
** Wouldn't you like to know?

" _Terminado_ ," Sombra retorts, sinking back in her seat with a cheeky smile and graciously accepting the little paper umbrella that came with Widow's latest mimosa. "You can be the little spoon."

"You speak Spanish," Moira more observes than asks with a dry amusement, brows lifting slightly with the information. 

Her fingertip finding the underside of the taller woman's chin, Jack tips her own head back to rest on the other's shoulder, a mischievous smile curving over her countenance as she answers back, "Vargas, babe. Spanish and passable _te reo_ , in a pinch."

She clicks her tongue to the roof of her mouth, drawls out amusedly, "Learning some _real interesting_ Gaeilge lately."

"Ugh. I'm done," Reyes announces from across the table, his voice gruff in a way that doesn't touch his countenance. There's a curl to the corner of his mouth as he levers up from his seat, a third tortilla in hand, a faint crinkling of his eyes when he looks at them. Little signs here and there that speak more of his thoughts than the timbre of his voice ever will. Then, with a nod to Moira, "You going out with these little shits? Keep them in line?"

There's the shift of the sleeve so that Moira can check the watch around her wrist, inspecting the time for an instant before asserting, "I am afraid not. I'll need to reschedule the movers, and there are a few matters I should respond to as pertains to the Ministries while I've the time."

Scarlet and blue eyes thoughtful, the geneticist informs her, "Keep out of trouble, will you?"

And can she really make any promises, out with Widow an Liv? She wants to. The smile that touches her countenance is fond as she answers, "I'll try. Maybe not _hard_ , but I'll try."

"I will find you if my work concludes swiftly," Moira promises then.

Dark eyes warm, Jack tilts her head to accept a peck on the cheek, a gentle kiss goodbye, at least until later. Her fingertips feel a little warm for it. She watches as Moira heads off to the hotel once more, sees the fond glance offered back at her before the taller woman turns around the corner and is gone. 

_I will find you if it concludes swiftly_.

That's what she's told.

She believes it.

She doesn't catch the way Reyes's dull crimson eyes flick toward the geneticist at the statement. The subtle tension of a muscle in Moira's angular jaw. The game that two old friends are playing, that no one else can see. 

She believes it.

She doesn't catch that _Gabriel doesn't_.

\--- 

It's visceral. 

It hits hard. 

Though Moira O'Deorain certainly felt it _begin_ in the dim hours of the night when slumber seemed a faraway dream. The same way she felt it _build_ this morning, burning faintly beneath the flesh and sinew while she drank her criminally over-burnt coffee, thankful only for the strength of the brew. 

The same way that it _breaks_ now, on the short walk back to the hotel room that she shares with her Junker counterpart. A low, sickening ache that builds in the marrow of her arm and branches outward, radiating from points that feel deeply bruised and lancing across the medtech that stabilizes her arm. It is meant to _keep_ her arm from wholly necrotizing and tearing itself apart. She is beginning to wonder if it will succeed at that for much longer. 

It is perhaps a small grace that it did not occur _over breakfast_ , she muses, having to pause near the door and brace a hand on the terra cotta exterior of the building, red clay rough beneath her palm and warmed from the sun. But it would be absolute falsity to claim that it is any _saving_ grace. It is instead all she can ddo to curl her arm around her thin torso, feeling akin to a fox, freshly escaped from the steel maw of a hunter's trap as she fumbles with her keycard with her other hand, succeeding in letting herself into the hotel room proper at long last.

The décor is simple, but aesthetically pleasing. The white curtains carefully drawn to obscure the beach beyond. The memory of their eve on the balcony not unpleasant, but ill-holding against the ache in her bones. There are times when she wonders if it is all a part of some grand plan. If moments such as these are reminders that she does not deserve the things that she has. If they are penance, in some small fashion, for some of the things that she has done. It is folly, of course. A last holdover of Catholic guilt from her childhood, perhaps. 

She can't help but emit a soft, bitter laugh at that. Without relief, she deposits her keys, wallet, other small affects on the stand near the bed, easing down onto one side of the turquoise and chocolate-coloured comforter, her feet on the floor as she struggles to draw in another breath. Another. One more. Good. _Breathe, Moira_. It takes her a moment to steady herself, find her resolve once more. _You are above this_.

Slowly pulling her shirt over her head, she feels her skin prickle uncomfortably, of a sudden both too warm and too cold all at once. Under much different circumstances, it occurs to her that she may have found this all quite fascinating. Perhaps, she considers with a dry, but dark chuckle, were the symptoms not affecting _her_ person. Empathy, is perhaps not her grandest suit, after all.

It takes time to remove her shirt, every second agony in an attempt not to jostle her arm as it throbs, the joints protesting the movement with every shift and subtle flex of the musculature. The pull of cloth over her head leaves her hair staticky, and it sticks to her forehead as she slowly attempts to uncurl the limb. It feels stiff, sickening, bruised in the joint of the elbow and the wrist, and her knuckles crackle softly as she attempts to unclench her long, taloned fingers.

Yes. Under distinctly different circumstances, Moira concludes, watching a flicker of dark energy flare and dissipate between her fingertips. Were the deadened nerves not misfiring and everything gone _wrong_ for a second time, in such a _felt_ way. By now, she knows that the burning in her bones must be micro-fractures, osseous matter cracking apart and healing with a pronounced itch in dreadful synchronicity. She watches with a dim fascination as blood pools beneath her skin, pale complexion dappled with sickly hues of purple-black, plum, red and then green-yellow as the injury comes into being and fades once more almost simultaneously.

It is...not ideal. Certainly not so far away from her laboratory and equipment. Certainly this far removed from her original research and the original instance. Not since her first failed, flawed experiment at the watchpoint in Oslo, when she had almost lost the limb in entirety. Might have, were it not for Angela's quick intervention. This? This is not as dire, but it is an ominous portent of things to come all the same. 

Her pain tolerance is far from _low_. Still, it proves no easy task to cross the room and remove her datapad from her luggage. To do even so little as sit at the room's small, solitary desk, far too diminutive for her tall frame, so that she can document the day's events, symptoms, and a rudimentary timeline in shorthand notation, carefully jotted script. Teeth grit as an unpleasant sensation ripples down her arm to terminate at her fingertips, she carefully takes note of her vital signs with utmost diligence, then tucks the datapad back into her things. 

There is a brief moment of temptation. An inclination that she has to fight down. An urge to reach out, make contact. Ask a favour of someone who would most certainly accomplish it, if in a brash, bold fashion that would cause too many ripples. Best to keep it under wraps. _Wait for Shimada_. Best not to show the weakness before she, herself, has time to remedy it. She tells herself that it will be easily remedied upon her return to Oasis. Upon her return to her laboratory and equipment, her intern, her easy access to some of the brightest minds of the century, lauded in their individual fields. 

Life is breathed into the little white lies she tells herself, not yet realizing yet how far they will take her. 

Arm curled around her ribs, the musculature marked by the occasional spasm and twitch as she holds it to her side, skin all-too-warm and simultaneously clammy, Moira rises to her feet and slowly makes her way toward the bathroom, the mosaicked tile underfoot cold to the touch. It's quaint. White-and-blue ceramic, copper fixtures, soaps in the shape of starfish and shells, with a deep-basined bath shrouded behind a white curtain. It still smells faintly of orange and clove from this morning. The peculiar, mechanic's soap that Jacqueline brings with them everywhere. 

Metal rings on metal as she draws the shower curtain back with one hand and turns on the water, set to the lowest temperature it will allow. Waiting until a cold mist starts to rise, she gives herself time to breathe and think, to adjust to the idea of moving once more before she has to. Turns on music on her comm and sets it on the sink. _Queen_. _Bowie_. _Classical_. Loud enough to drown out her thoughts, distract her in some subtle fashion.

The ache is intense, white-hot in her joints as she strips out of her clothes, her movements slow and practiced in such a way to provide minimal impact. For a split-second, head bowed slightly as she stands in the centre of the bathroom, a flashfire thought informs a moment of vulnerability. 

A desire that Jacqueline were here, though she knows the truth of the matter. If Jacqueline were her, she would mask it all the more. The Junker should not be privy to this, for as near as they are, there is a necessary distance she needs to keep. She doesn't want the other to see her like this. Doesn't want to see those warm, chocolate-coloured eyes filled with worry, concern, behind dark lashes. _It is nothing_ , she tells herself as she looks up with mismatched eyes, sees herself in the mirror. It is nothing that cannot be remedied in Oasis, and that is all the more reason not to make it more than it is. 

Stepping over the lip of the bath and into the frigid water that hammers down from the showerhead, Moira breathes out in a sudden hiss at the shift in temperature, an unpleasant sensation that is nonetheless _more_ pleasant than the sensation of her musculature consuming itself and rebuilding in tandem. The burning nerve endings in a limb that is _functionally dead_ , that shouldn't _feel_. At least not to any conceivable degree.

It feels like ice, the water that sluices down onto her pale skin to drive up a faint tinct of blue, that drives up goosebumps from head to toe by the time she even considers leaving it. Until her teeth chatter and the sensation of _cold_ overtakes everything else. Until her arm feels less and less and less, a dull ache all that's left, a mere echo of what it felt before. Cold and almost pleasantly numb in some respects, her wet hair plastered to her brow, Moira turns the temperature of the water up slowly to find an equilibrium at each stage. 

She does not leave the shower for almost an hour and a half, and only then because someone knocking on the door has permeated through, cut across the sound of rushing water. Skin warmed once more and a bit of soap crackling in her wet hair, plastered to her brow, she reaches for a towel and wraps it around herself, not bothering to dress as she makes her way out into the bedroom and to the door with beads of water still scattered across pale, freckled skin.

Jacqueline may have misplaced the keycard. That's what she reasons to herself as she unlatches the door and pulls it open. She hopes that it isn't Jacqueline all the same, not ready to discuss what has happened.

It's worse.

It's Gabriel.

His expression alone tells her enough once the door is open enough to see it. Dressed in the same gray hoodie and dark jeans from earlier, he simply _looks_ at her at first, his dull crimson eyes full of something that lives between concern and _certainty that something is amiss_. There is a distinct moment in which she contemplates simply closing the door once more, pretending that nothing at all has transpired and calling it an afternoon. 

It has been nothing short of a _morning_ , after all, and she does not relish the conversation that he begins with a raspy, "What is it?"

Moira does not move at that, her expression all sharp-featured and stony, betraying nothing as scarlet and blue eyes search his countenance, attempting to pan for meaning as if it were bits of gold.

"Don't start that shit with me," Gabriel asserts bluntly at that. His voice is serious, its hollow nature leaving a subtle echo, even as wisps of wraith-like shadow start to lick around the collar of his sweater and then die out. He's agitated. Emotional. "I'm not Morrison."

"Am I to be thankful for small favours?" Moira retorts, low lilt permeated by a flinch when a muscle spasms to betray her. Of course it would. Of course, whilst Gabriel is present. Nothing may ever be easy.

She doesn't need to ask him to know that he has seen _something_ , even if he doesn't know the full spectrum of it, and thus does no attempt to make an excuse for it. Offers nothing, instead. Gabriel is no fool. It is, in fact, one of the things that she appreciates the most about him, and the first thing that she became acquainted with in her early ays of Overwatch involvement. Back when everything was new and their collaborative efforts seemed full of a limitless potential.

Her hand slips from the door slowly, and her tall frame turns as she heads back into the room, allowing him in without further protest.

The door shuts with a _click_ after he's entered, and he settles at the foot of the bed, comfortable, finding the remote while she fetches a set of clothes and heads back into the bathroom to change. 

"You alright?" his voice is gruff, but somewhat muffled through the bathroom door as she starts to pull on a change of attire. She can hear him flipping through the channels on the vidscreen.

There's still a bit of an ache to the limb, the joints stiff as she pulls on a heather gray t-shirt, hastily drying her hair with the towel before tossing it over the shower curtain to dry. Boxer briefs. Neatly-pressed trousers in slate grey. A soft maroon shirt. Black socks. All quite routine for an away mission, when lord only knows what may rouse them next or how quickly she may need to prepare to board a transport once more.

When she exits, Moira tucks the fine, golden chain and its amber pendant back beneath her shirt. 

"Superb," is what she responds with, timbre low and lilting as she contemplates the situation. "you realize that Jacqueline may return soon."

" _Jacqueline_ is out with Lacroix and Liv," Gabriel retorts with little care, having settled on another series about paranormal investigations, the documentarians on the screen utilizing a small electronic device to attempt communications with the beyond. "We'll be lucky if they don't end up in Argentina."

When she settles near the head of the bed, seated against the headboard with her long limbs stretched out comfortably before her, he doesn't look up. Without comment, she draws out her comm and starts to check communications from the Ministries.

After a time, he presses, "You've been favouring your arm, and I can see at least three _bites_ you think you're hiding underneath that shit on your neck. You want to tell me why you aren't healing, or you want me to drop hints to Liv until she-"

"Gabriel," Moira's voice is sharper now, and she can feel the words cut themselves on the edges of her teeth. Feels them like the precise edges of a scalpel, bisecting what she knows and what she can bring herself to say. "Your _concern_ is appreciate, and duly _noted_ , but I have the situation well in hand. It will certainly not be _helped_ by involving and _distressing_ Olivia, and I am certain that we can both agree that it is much easier for me to attend my business without her _intervention_."

"It's serious, then. You didn't just get winged when we were..." he tilts his head toward the door, indicating Castillo, Dorado beyond it. 

Her jaw goes wire-tight, gaze shrewd as it alights upon him. It takes a few seconds for her to queue up another message to Minister al-Kharim, after which she admits only so much as, "I am experiencing mild instability in my medtech, I'm afraid. Nothing that cannot be _easily_ remedie when I return to my laboratory."

Gabriel's silence speaks volumes, his crimson gaze settled on the vidscreen, though it's clear his thoughts are elsewhere. When he does speak, it's with the gall to ask, "You told her, then?"

Mismatched gaze holding his when he turns, Moira arches a perfect brow as she inquires, "Are you quite finished?"

"I don't know, are you done playing games yet?" Gabriel doesn't break eye contact this time, and she could swear the hint of luminescence to his back-lit crimson eyes is a little brighter against the ash-brown of his complexion. He nods toward her arm then, "Mild instability in the tech why you want to talk to Genji Shimada? Or we pretending that he isn't the easiest route to Ziegler now, too?"

She's starting to feel it again. Closes the datapad and sets it down onto the duvet beside her, voice clear as she asserts, "This has _nothing_ to do with Angela. _Leave_."

"Talk," is all he responds with, gruff. Blunt as ever.

It takes her a few seconds to process it. To fully parse everything that races through her mind at that second. Anger. Irritation. Resignation at the fact that he's latched onto this, will surely pursue it tenaciously as a dog might a bone. 

With a slow exhalation and no small measure of exasperation at this fact, she inquires slowly, "What would you like me to say, Gabriel? That I'm not certain, either? That it could be a vast many things, none of which are particularly pleasant to consider? That it is _hardly worth_ divulging further information before I know for certain?"

"It's a start," comes his response, and for the first time this evening, she sees those dully crimson eyes soften around the edges a little. Hears the worry beneath the rasping of his voice, and then it's she that cannot hold _his_ gaze any longer. 

_That I fear what this may mean?_

\--- 

The night is crisp, when it comes.

Cold in the aftermath of the storm that rolled through not a few hours past, and droplets of water cling to the rocks, roll down the wet timber of the wooden walkway that takes Jack, Olivia, and Widow down onto the damp, white sand. The surf rolls in, it rolls out, a whisper of water in the dead of night as the clouds part to reveal a glittering starscape overhead. It reminds her some, this moment, of Australia. The white sand, the salt air, the surf pounding at the shore not far from them.

Passing a fishbowl cocktail over to Jack, Liv kicks off her shoes and wades into the oncoming tide barefoot, gooseflesh breaking out on her skin and a little laugh of delight sounding before the hacker observes with some curiosity, "You never answered my question either, _araña_."

Settling cross-legged on a bleached, worn-smooth trunk of driftwood, Jack takes a slow sip from one of the long and completely unnecessary bendy straws at the edge of the fishbowl cocktail. It isn't bad. It tastes of good rum and a bit of orange from the curacao, something sweeter that's a little harder to place beneath the flavour of pineapple and coconut. Careful not to spill it, she rolls her sleeves down to keep the cuffs between her hands and the cool exterior of the bowl.

Her compatriots seem none too bothered by the chill, though she supposes that Widow never does. Liv, barefoot in the surf not a stone's throw away, a cheeky smile upon the hacker's countenance. She watches as the other gives a little hop an a skip, back up onto the beach where Widow stands like a sentinel, rises on her tiptoes to thread a brilliantly coloured paper umbrella behind the sniper's ear. 

A purple-gloved fingertip finds the end of a blue-tinted nose, followed by the soft intonation of, "Boop," fond as it ever is. 

Jack is starting to feel like she can read the Frenchwoman's expressions. Not well, perhaps, but better. It isn't so much the cool, ever-present façade. It's the brief flicker of emotion behind shimmeringly gold eyes when the hacker cranes up to place a purple-lipsticked kiss to a pale, blue cheekbone.

" _Je ne vais plus te lâcher_ ," comes a velvety response from Widowmaker, and maybe it's the alcohol or the breeze or the sudden chill from the water, but she could swear there's a hint of pink to Liv's countenance for that.   
** I'm not going to let you go.

The wind ruffles the paper umbrella perched behind Widow's ear, and Jack averts her gaze when a slender hand brushes the hacker's cheek. Maybe she should have turned in for the evening, should hop up from the sand and give them this, more than a moment of privacy for whatever tenderness has passed between them. A minute passes. Two. 

And then a question falls in a velvety accent, draws her attention back toward Widow, back toward Olivia, whose arm is slung loosely around the sniper's waist, and whose expression speaks volumes more than words ever could. Satisfaction, adoration, delight, a gamut of things that live in between in the little moments. 

"Do you suppose," Widow begins, golden eyes settled in the vicinity of the docks and a contemplative expression upon her countenance. "That anyone would miss that boat, _chéri_?"

And, oh. She's seen that look once before.

Out on the canals in Rialto.

About three seconds before they decided to steal a gondola.

Their night out is just getting started.

\---

Moira does not know when she drifts to sleep in the early hours of the morning, though it is certainly well after Gabriel and she have talked into the evening, and weariness has set in after the events of what has been nothing short of a _trying_ day. She is not, in truth, aware of when he left to look for the others - only that she woke once after he must have and found a glass of water on the stand beside her, the door latched securely from the inside. An easy enough trick for a man who can turn into mist.

She is no more aware of what time it is when she stirs once more, her scarlet and blue eyes slipping open to drink in the cool, pleasant darkness of the hotel room, the curtains closed and only a hint of silvery light emanating from around the edges to drift in. It washes everything in a deep grayscale, all monochrome, shadow and silhouette. 

The air conditioning is on, a soft hum that permeates silence and stillness, keeps the room comfortably crisp and beneath the duvet pleasantly warm. It is not the comfort of her bed at home, but it is not far from it, all the more so when the mattress dips behind her and a slender, warm frame slips beneath the sheets to nestle comfortably to her back. 

She can't see the slender, tattooed arms that slip around her beneath the blankets, but she doesn't need to. Instead exhales in a slow, fluid breath that takes a faint measure of tension with it at its terminus, even as a familiar Junker nuzzles between her shoulder-blades and settles in there. 

Jacqueline carries the scent of the sea, of crisp ocean air, all salt and ozone in the aftermath of inclement weather. It clings to bare skin, makes her wonder how long the other was out on Castillo, likely on the beach, instead of _here_ with her. It is no matter, for the best that it transpired this way, that Jacqueline was not here while she contended with the machinations of her own treacherous limb and the impromptu heart-to-heart with Gabriel that followed afterwards.

Flexing her hand experimentally where it rests above the duvet, Moira can see the glinting of its metal implants in the dark. 

"Babe," is what Jacqueline murmurs then, to the back of her shoulder, the word muffled and tired, almost inaudible for the thickness of the other's voice and the strength of its accent. There's a slow, warm exhalation, the breath of which she feels through the soft fabric of her shirt, before cool fingertips search for the hem of it and fumble there for an instant.

"Mm?" Moira sounds out in turn.

When subtly calloused hands slip beneath her shirt to brush up along her back, it almost...almost, but not quite, chases away the none-too-distant memory of her body turning inward upon itself not hours past. It isn't long before Jacqueline's touch warms to her skin, and she relaxes back into it, the slow way that it brushes up toward her lean shoulders, thumbs stroking there gently before it trails back to trace the dip of her spine.

A minute passes. Another. And she shifts onto her back, feeling a slender hand come to rest at her side and the other trail over the plane of her stomach to trace the sharp angle of the pelvic bone. The shift comes as anticipated, comes slowly as she drapes a long arm around the slender form at her side. Jacqueline curls closer, the glimmer of dark eyes seen briefly in the dark before the Junker's countenance nestles to the side of her neck.

She turns her head only just enough to brush a light kiss to the other's temple, feels the return of a sleepy kiss beneath her jaw, the faint murmuring of something she can't quite catch before it's chased by a languid, warm exhalation. Fingertips still after a time. Breaths become shallow. And that starts to pull her under in turn, coppery lashes all but fluttering closed to the sound of the other's breathing and the comfortable, warm weight of the woman at her side.

It's strange to think upon some nights. That this has become some semblance of normal. That she is far too used to an empty bed in an empty home, and that this...that she didn't know that this was something she was missing until she _had it_.

All but on the border of a dreamless sleep, her mismatched eyes nonetheless flash back open at the sound of the floor creaking to her side, footsteps padding along the dark timber toward the side of the bed. Were the circumstances different, a flicker of violet light not seen as her head jerks up, perhaps the reaction would have been all the poorer. Instead, she feels a faint incredulity as the mattress dips and another slender frame burrows beneath the duvet, all but mirroring the position of the Junker on the opposite side, albeit with a stuffed bear in tow. 

Mismatched eyes draw in the mess of ombre hair tucked to her shoulder, the dim glow of neural implants, the button-eyes of _Arturito_ drawn up beneath Olivia's chin, and she exhales in a low and weary sigh. "These are not your accommodations, Olivia."

It is, all things considered, _harmless_ , and she is loathe to wake the Junker at her side. Briefly, Moira considers that she could slip from bed and shift the hacker to the sofa. Instead, she reiterates after a moment, " _Olivia_."

A gloved finger finds her lips, followed by a somewhat slurred complaint of, "Shhh. Shhhhh, _Eres tan fuerte_." and what can only be described as an unintelligible string of half-sentences before the hacker shifts over _more_ onto her pillow and settles in for the night.   
** You're so loud

Mismatched eyes stare at the ceiling.

Perhaps it will be a longer night than she anticipated. 

It is. 

Fitful is the sleep that finds her, and when she does awaken in the morning, it is in a tangle of limbs, overwarm and with little hope of a clean extrication.

Ginger hair falling into her eyes, their scarlet and blue squinting at the blinds in a vain attempt to discern the time, save _daylight_ , Moira muses that a far younger version of herself, fresh-faced and newly out of medschool, may have found this an interesting or even amusing predicament. 

Her very _current_ self has a decidedly stiff shoulder, currently dampened through the fabric of her shirt from Olivia sleeping there open-mouthed, a stuffed bear crammed to the side of her face to force her neck at an unpleasant angle, and a Junker's hand slid only just beneath the waistband of her boxer briefs. Not in untoward manner at current, but still _there_ and quite present in her mind. 

It takes her a moment to determine how best to extricate herself from the situation, tired as she is yet and quite honestly desirous of a cup of coffee before their trip back on the transport. But the arm beneath Olivia is still sore, the joints ache, and an attempt to move it is met with low murmuring in Spanish and the pressing of that _bloody bear_ more firmly into her cheek, which does little to aid her mood. 

She elects to turn her head toward the Junker instead, uttering a low intonation of, "Jacqueline," near the other's ear. Her counterpart has moved little in the night, a small saving grace, all coppery skin and ink and dark hair splayed over the pillows in the early morning. She watches as night-dark eyes flutter open slowly, only to squint at catching the light from the blinds. It gives them a warmer hue, like chocolate and coffee, before they're masked by dark lashes once more. 

The Junker's countenance twists subtly before Jacqueline asks, accent all the more prevalent with sleep, "Mm...time is it?"

The thumb beneath her waistband strokes the skin there lightly, and Jacqueline shifts subtly, cheek propped upon her shoulder and eyes half-lid as the other acclimates to the world of the waking. Sans the hacker drooling on the opposite one, she must admit this would be a rather pleasant way to start the morning.

"Early," Moira answers back, leaning forward to place a feather-light kiss to the scar at the apex of the other's lip and watching dark lashes flutter at that with a sense of satisfaction. The fingertips on her pale skin curl faintly in response. "I need you to move, _a rúnsearc_."

That earns her a soft grunt of disapproval, dark eyes still barely open, but flicking sidelong at her at the request. It isn't until the younger woman slowly levers up, all coppery bare skin and inked markings, the outline of the Hydra constellation emblazoned across the back of a shoulder, that Moira realizes that Jacqueline undressed for bed at all. Or that there's a bit of gauze taped over the interior of the other's upper arm, hints of colour bleeding through. 

She catches the other woman lightly by the elbow, waits until those dark eyes have drifted back to her to inquire a low and lilting, "What's this?"

A yawn is nearly her only response, Jacqueline raking a mess of dark hair back with the other hand before lifting slender shoulders slightly and mumbling, "Tattoo. I think."

"You think?" comes her response, alongside the arch of a perfect brow. 

"Mm. Yell at me later," the Junker remarks with a prominent Australian accent, stretching slowly once more before craning over to peck her on the cheek. "My mouth feels drier than the fucking Outback, babe."

It looks for an instant that the other may simply sprawl back into bed with her, but instead, Jacqueline blinks slowly at noting Olivia's slumbering presence and asks with a certain bemusement, "Did..."

The gesture between them, brief as it is, tells her everything that she needs to know about the Junker's retention of the previous evening at this juncture - or at least the majority of it - and she emits a low sound between amusement and exasperation, chasing it with a soft scoff before answering, "Hardly."

When that slim frame has moved sufficiently, first shuffling across the room to their luggage, then into the bathroom with a change of clothes and a pair of _her_ sunglasses in tow, Moira starts the slow process of slipping her arm out from beneath Olivia. It is not wildly successful, for each time that she attempts to sink back even a scarce measure, it seems that the hacker clings closer, until she's all but on the edge of the bed with her arm still beneath the other woman. 

When Olivia's leg hooks over her and the hacker clings _closer_ instead of any progress made, Moira allows her head to fall back to the pillows with a low sigh, and simply turns to black mist, drifting over near the window before reassembling into mortal form and straightening her drool-dampened t-shirt. 

Quite nearly reaching for the blinds to open them, the geneticist is given pause by the tall, lithe form of Amelie Lacroix propped against the wall in a chair, appearing dead asleep and upright, a set of dark glasses shrouding golden eyes and a questionably empty wine bottle on the floor beside her. 

With a low sound of amusement as she looks back toward the bed, then toward the window once more, Moira simply shakes her head and makes her way toward the bathroom to ready herself for the day in like kind, forgoing attending to the extraneous persons occupying her hotel room at current. It's hardly worth waking them, and she suspects, given the amount of sand tracked near the door and the way that Olivia is now dead asleep in the centre of her bed, that the lot of them would benefit from whatever additional sleep they may garner between now and departure. It is well-needed.

By the time she makes it into the bathroom, the air is full of fragrant steam and smells of citrus and clove, Jack damp-haired and bleary-eyed with a toothbrush tucked in the corner of her mouth in front of the mirror. The words, "Shower's still warm, babe," are muffled around the brush, but she understands them well enough, places a kiss to the Junker's cheek before summarily stripping out of her clothes and stepping in. 

They pass their makeshift morning routine largely in silence, something easily settled into and with little protest. When she's finished with the shower, Jacqueline has already combed through and untangled a mess of damp, dark hair, tied it back into a knot at the base of her skull to prevent it dampening the Junker's tank-top, a faded and somewhat tattered black garment that she believes at this juncture barely qualifies as such. 

She knows that she looks tired, can read it in the circles beneath her eyes and the occasional yawn that cannot quite be stifled, but doesn't realize how tired that must be until Jacqueline stops her, in little else but her trousers and a belt, and uses the latter to pull her over toward a short cabinet to sit atop it. Tattooed hands gather up the towel around her shoulders, firm and certain as they massage the back of her neck through it, tend to drying her still-wet hair until it's glossy and copper rather than slicked to her scalp. 

Jacqueline moves slowly, with the precision that she imagines the other may apply to much different functions - the tightening of bolts, the stripping of wires - and it feels...above all things, very good, the faintly damp towel settled back around her shoulders before the other moves to find her comb. She could protest, to be certain. She can certainly accomplish all of these things herself. But there is also a deep satisfaction in allowing it to be. To allow, perhaps even in the smallest measures, another to care for her. 

There is a moment, somewhere between the drawing of a fine-toothed comb through her damp, ginger locks and the spreading of a small measure of pomade on the Junker's subtly-calloused hands, in which Moira could almost fall asleep, feels her scarlet and blue eyes fall half-lid, then close as citrus-scented product is applied, fingertips drawn along her scalp as it's spread through. A contented sound escapes her at the gentle ministrations, and she finds, despite herself, that she leans subtly into the touch. 

"I used to do this for my brothers sometimes," comes a soft confession from the Junker, fingertips raking through her hair once more, trailing down the back of her neck afterwards, the thumbs rubbing a gentle half-circle just behind her ears. "Not as nicely. I must like you."

"Mm," is all Moira murmurs initially, eyes closed and head tipped slightly forward. The exhalation that escapes her is slow and languid, a sigh. After a moment, her coppery lashes flutter, head tipping back as scarlet and blue eyes open to seek much darker ones. "You'll have me asleep if you keep at that, rabbit."

The upturn of the corner of the other's lips marks a mischievous smile, the pad of the Junker's fingertips tracing the shell of her ears before Jacqueline answers in a smooth cadence, "Promise? I could put Liv outside."

"We have a transport to catch if you want to _actually_ change accommodations this week," Moira muses in turn, though a faint curl marks the corner of her lips in turn. Mismatched eyes scanning the other's countenance, she remains seated as the Junker withdraws to fetch her shirt, a silk button down in pale blue. Not protesting as she's assisted in slipping her arms through the sleeves, she nonetheless emits a low chuckle when Jacqueline skirts around the chair, straddling her thighs in a deft motion and then sitting there as nimble fingers start to straighten and secure the buttons.

"You seem to have recovered from your evening out," she observes thoughtfully, not protesting when the other's hands go flat to tuck the shirt into her belt and then return to the buttons.

Jacqueline offers a little sound of mirth by way of response, leaving the shirt seemingly purposefully half-buttoned and walking fingertips up her sternum to the chin to confide amusedly, "It's not Junker moonshine, babe. If it doesn't strip paint, I'll survive."

Those dark eyes flick toward her touch when she wraps long, taloned fingers around the Junker's upper arm and pulls the other closer, the opposite hand lifting to carefully ease the tape free around the patch of gauze there and peel it back. It's a tattoo, because of course it is. Bold in violet and pink, heavily resembling the local graffiti, a vivid rendition of Sombra's signature sugar skull.

She arches a brow, says simply, "I'll have to stop letting you out with Olivia, it seems."

Another bit of gauze at the knuckle of the pointer finger, a diminutive black rook inked there. The Roman numeral six on the ring finger, all well done, well-bandaged, and likely to heal well from the structure. When she releases the younger woman's arm, those arms drape around her neck, fingertips toying idly with the short hair at the nape. 

"What am I going to do with you, Jacqueline?" is what she asks then, a hint of amusement creeping into her voice. 

"You could try cherishing a bitch?" the Junker retorts, and the kiss that's brushed to her lips is short, but sweet. She chuckles into it despite herself, scarlet and blue eyes amused when the other draws back to wink at her. Tattooed fingers curl in her belt then, pulling as if to encourage her to stand, and Jacqueline teases, "Come on. We _have a transport to catch_."

"Those are my sunglasses," Moira opts to point out as they're slid onto the Junker's countenance, masking dark eyes from view as they step back out into the other room together, knowing what the other is thinking before it's so much as mentioned. "Do not."

She doesn't need to question who the knock on the door is. 

Jacqueline clicks a tongue to the roof of her mouth, a cheeky smile toying at the corner of the other's lips as the Junker moves to answer it, pulling it open to let sunlight into the room an squinting into it. Displeased French sounds from the corner. Displeased Spanish from the bed. 

"Hell, this _is_ Gibraltar all over again," is all Reyes says as he steps in, sliding a carrier of coffee and a bag of pastry onto the small table. 

She can't help but to chuckle at that.

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea how science works.


End file.
